us to try to lay out what some of the ingredients  are so that we have an idea what we might aim for:

If we were to grow into emotionally  mature people, this is some of what  

we would have learnt how to be: - We would strive to understand  

the specific ways in which our childhoods  had made us crazy. We would accept that  

most of what we are is shaped by relatively  small events that unfold before we are ten.  

We would find a good therapist. - We would notice the patterns.  

Perhaps we wouldn't need to keep trying  to impress older figures of authority;  

or to fall in love with distant people who were  involved with someone else. We would acquire a  

(low-resolution) map of our neuroses. - There would be a little more delay  

between feeling something and having  to act on it. We might even at times  

simply observe a feeling and do nothing. - We could bear to listen. We would no longer cut  

across and say, ‘That reminds me of something…’  just as another person started to share their  

story. We would soothe our own wounded egos into  silence, look warmly into their eyes and say,  

‘Tell me more, this sounds so interesting…’ - Fewer people would strike us as being  

either very good or very bad; we would sense  the struggle in everyone to keep afloat. We  

would judge that we were all a mixture  of the good-hearted and the egoistic. We  

would have less of an impulse to stone wrongdoers. - We would take measures to stay pessimistic about  

how things turn out; we would remind ourselves on  an hourly basis that all relationships are riven  

with pain, all business ventures are maddening,  and all families are demented. We wouldn't feel  

so persecuted; this is how things universally are  (it's just that other people carefully omit to  

speak about it). We would get less hopeful and  - therefore - less bitter and less furious. Of  

course, things are often slightly disastrous, of  course, we have made some terrible mistakes, of  

course, we have been betrayed and treated badly.  It would all feel eminently and supremely normal. 

- We would cease lamenting our wrong turns: we  probably did marry the wrong person; we almost  

certainly did choose the wrong career. Probably  we are living in the wrong country (and definitely  

the wrong house). We invested in useless things.  We befriended unworthy sorts, we made awful errors  

bringing up our children, we neglected our health.  We would be starting to get it right if we lived  

to a 1,000 or could do half a dozen practice runs. - We would 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 bit of anything. - We would marvel at the passage of the years.  

Growing old: what a strange thing  to happen to a little boy or girl. 

- We would have been through a sufficient number  of summers and winters to know that things do  

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 wouldn't  even register anymore. What we are weeping about  

today may make no sense a while from now.  They say you'll get over it - and you will. 

- We would laugh more richly because we  had capitulated to the darkest truths.

This is some of what we might think and  feel if we ever became those paragons  

of true intelligence: emotionally mature people.