One of the things that makes human beings great
is our astonishing capacity to learn
we are always picking up new things
and correcting earlier errors
but there is one area where it seems so hard
to acquire new knowledge and change
emotional life
It's one with very small children
between our first day and around our 8th year
that our emotional hard drives are encoded
and it's in this period that we learn
whether we can trust
whether we like ourselves
whether we can be open
where blame belongs
what to do when the world hurts us
how much we can tell others of what distresses us
what degree of directness can be tolerated
and how much of our naughtiness
and excitement
can be witnessed and forgiven
unfortunately for human kind
a catastrophic amount can go wrong here
despite all the improvements in early infant care
that has taken place in last century
without anyone really meaning for this to happen
it remains pretty easy
to pick up some really unhealthful lessons
in this early years
way before we really understand
what's going on
we may acquire a lack of trust
an excesive fear of humilation
a deep shame about our bodies
there are indirect patterns of communicating
and an inability
either to be close to someone
or tolerate a measure of distance from them
we might assume that this failures can simply get corrected
just like an early error when doing quadratic equations
and yet we're likely to realise
especially the older we get
how stubbornly encoded the faults in the hard drive really are
this can feel absurd and humilating
there is an understandbly impatient view
that one should've caused
get over one's childhood
we're liable to get impatient
with people who may be close to fifty
and still talking in wounded terms about their parents
now long dead
who said something a little humilating to them decades ago
but this impatient brusqueness
with the patterns lay down in childhood is no good
it may simply be wisest to accept that
there will at points be a furious
unhinged inner five year old
who's gonna take charge of us
refuse to seed the controls
in an attempt to cause mayhem
we should know that we can be enduringly
and deeply wounded by the past
and should therefore when we can manage it
fine words to wound those we care about
what living with us is actually going to mean
The great learning in 20th century psychology
which is still being only patchily assimilated
is that those early years are emotionally speaking simply everything
it would be so much easier if it weren't like this
but the die is cast then that can almost never be reshaped
we are more or less the life-long prisoners of dinamics
that may've been set in motion half of century ago
by parents who weren't even mean just under in a pressure
it's a sobering situation that cause for humility
forgiveness, constant vigilence over one's own conduct
polite warnings to others and a very black sense of humor