maturation

With endless pharmacological supplies at our fingertips, we do not need to penetrate the motives behind our actions, feelings, transgressions, dreams, and phobias. High on chemical substances we can remain stagnated in an infantile mental state. Without introspection, we foreclose ourselves from gaining the insight that allows us to navigate adulthood__ ceaseless demands.

King was a transformed person. Evil was no longer a theory.

As is the case with many adolescents, Lewis's increased command over over the things of the world brought with it a corresponding atrophy of the moral sense.

Perception of a self is not simply about actuality. Human beings_ identities are self-generating and people constantly revise and recreate the story of their being. Coming-into-being, not being, is the highest expression of reality. We only attain the fullest knowledge of a living thing including ourselves when we know what it was, understand what it now is, and understand what it can become. We do not know the truth of a living thing__ existence until we discern its entire history from development to demise.

I fear that should I seek out the treasures around me, they might by comparison reveal that I have not cultivated the treasures within me.

A person begins childhood with a mind that is essentially a blank slate _ a tabula rasa _ before receiving outside impressions. Early childhood experiences and perceptions begin the formulation of a state of conscious awareness, the infantile steps in forming a personality, developing social and emotional behavior, and acquiring practical and book knowledge. Childhood plays a critical role in forming our final version of a self-concept.

Life includes unforeseen incidents that prove critical to promote personal growth. Life rarely gives us what we want. We are lucky if life gives us what we need in order to fulfill the path that was in place at our birthing.

We do not handle suffering. Suffering handles us.

Our wounds are the only thing humbling enough to break our attachment to our false self.

I hated the flashcards and I hated the multiplication tables, but I did enjoy the fact that my dad took time out of his schedule to help me in the areas in which I needed it.

To present is to take a stand and being responsible.

The adult within me would be much wiser to learn from the child within me rather than focus on the demand that the child within me grow up.

It is in building the best of our abilities that we ultimately destroy the worst of our liabilities.

To realize your potential you must look beyond the end of yourself, realizing that where you end is most likely where you actually begin.

In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice. He may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stance as many hands high according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter.

It is only when you suffer that you truly understand.

They worried that fantasies were somehow inoculating me against more practical realities.

Every child matures, which is both a blessing and a damn shame. Children can imagine worlds that never exist, worlds far more interesting and consoling than an adult knows.