A good starting point is to assume the worst--that you are, indeed, smug, and have been covering it up from yourself in order to feel humble so you can be even more smug about your humility, and so on.

I have worked very hard for my smugness, and intend to carry it with me through the next several lifetimes, and therefore, ex post facto through their respective deaths.

I suspect smugness to be terminal, therefore, even in cases where people throw themselves on religion in the last hours of their strife in an effort to beat the odds by acquiring last-minute forgiveness. They go off congratulating themselves on their imperfect cleverness, just chuckling over it as smug as you please, until they are rudely awakened by a slap on the bottom and discover they now have to learn everything all over again.

At which point they bawl.


A