17/04/2023
WHAT IS EMOTIONAL MATURITY?
Emotional maturity is a state few of us ever reach - or at least not for very long. But it may help us to try to lay out what some of its constituent parts are so that we have an idea what we might aim for:
- We realise, at last, and with considerable good humour, that we are fools. We are idiots now, we were idiots then and we will be idiots tomorrow. There are few other options for a human being.
- We shed our pride; we realise how much we constantly misunderstand - and never more so than when we start to have faith in our competence and sanity.
- We acknowledge the influence of the body on the mind. We may have sunk into existential despair not because there is anything objectively tragic at hand, but because we are in urgent need of an orange juice or have missed out on an hour of sleep.
- We respect the art of diplomacy and the importance of politeness; we acknowledge that other people might be just as easily hurt as we are.
- We learn, painfully, to use language to give those around us an indication of what is at play within us. We don’t hold it against them that they didn’t understand things we never bothered to teach them.
- We accept that we don’t immediately know how we feel and take the trouble interrogate our deep selves as to their real desires and intentions, probably by lying in bed or in a bath for a long time, pen and paper to hand.
- We acknowledge that it is impossible to be friends with everyone. Attempting to please universally ultimately leads to offending many; so we occasionally disappoint frankly to spare acquaintances the pain of excessive appeasement.- We feel more carefree at the idea of being strange, weird and even in areas ‘perverted’. None of these terms frighten us any longer. Public opinion matters less, because we have seen enough of the shallowness and reflex moralism of crowds. This is our one life - and we’ll be oddballs where we need to be.
- We take our own boredom as a guide. Everyone else may declare it a brilliant book or an extraordinary play. We might toss it aside or walk out.
- We accept that most of what we are was shaped by relatively small events that unfolded before we were ten. We are like goslings who are decisively imprinted by whatever they see just after they emerge from their shells. We go and find a therapist.
- We notice the patterns. Perhaps we don’t need to keep trying to impress older figures of authority; or to fall in love with distant people who are involved with someone else. We acquire a (low-resolution) map of our neuroses.
- There’s a little more delay between feeling something and having to act on it. We might even at times simply observe the feeling and do nothing.
- We can bear to listen. We no longer cut across and say, ‘That reminds me of something…’ just as the other person starts to share their story. We look warmly into their eyes and say, ‘Tell me more, this sounds so interesting…’
- Fewer people strike us as either very good or very bad; we sense the struggle in everyone to keep afloat. We’re all a mixture of the good-hearted and the egoistic. We have less of an impulse to stone wrongdoers.
- We take measures to stay pessimistic about how things will turn out; we remind ourselves on an hourly basis that all relationships are riven with pain, all business ventures are maddening and all families are demented. We aren’t being persecuted, this is how things universally are (it’s just that other people carefully omit to speak about it). We get less hopeful and - therefore - less bitter and less furious. Of course things are slightly disastrous, of course we have made some terrible mistakes, of course we have been betrayed and treated badly. It’s all eminently and supremely normal.
- We cease lamenting our wrong turns: we probably married the wrong person; we almost certainly chose the wrong career. Probably we’re living in the wrong country (and definitely house). We invested in useless things. We befriended unworthy sorts, we made awful errors bringing up our children, we’ve neglected our health. We’d be starting to get it right if we lived to a 1,000 or could do half a dozen practice runs.
- We acquire a correct measure of the difficulties we have imposed on others, especially those we love. We marvel that one or two people have - sometimes - put up with us.
- We realise that there is no manual on how to live. Everyone is making it up as they go along. No one is normal and no one understands more than a fraction of things. We remember Montaigne’s dictum: ‘Even on the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our arses.’ We get a bit less shy.
- We realise that most experiences are a mixture of hope and disappointment. Even in the most beautiful moments, regret and melancholy are never far away. Nothing is as pure as we crave it to be; much is bittersweet.
- We laugh more richly because we’ve capitulated to the darkest truths.
- We marvel at the passage of the years. Growing old: what a strange thing to have happened to a little boy or girl.
- We have been through a sufficient number of summers and winters to know that things pass, eventually. What looks at one time like a mountain will - over the years - be worn down to a pebble. Some of our greatest losses don’t even register any more. What you’re weeping about today will make no sense a while from now. They say you’ll get over it - and you will.
- We learn to be grateful for the minor things: a quiet evening, a beautiful sky at dawn, a bowl of lemons on a window ledge, the smell of apricots, a kind word or two with a stranger. We grow wary of grand plans and revolutionary ideals. We accept the virtues of an unremarkable life.
- We count it as a good day when nothing significant has gone wrong. We honour states of calm; boring is no longer any kind of dirty word.
- We cease to believe that there’s a party going on elsewhere. We go to bed early.
- We’re less offended by immaturity in others. A small person tells us they hate us and wants us dead: we understand.
- We accept the child within us. We relearn - very slowly - to be crybabys, because so much is sad and so much is beautiful.
- We can’t make this life flawless: we know our genius for visualising perfection and our equal talent for not reaching it. We take it day by day.
This is some of what might contribute to the mindset of that always unfinished and painfully elusive state of genuine adulthood.
