Denisia Nayve's Key Ideas from The School of Life
by The School of Life, Alain de Botton

Maturity involves accepting with good grace that we are all - like marionettes - manipulated by the past. And, when we can manage it, it may also require that we develop our capacity to judge and act in the ambiguous here and now with somewhat greater fairness and neutrality.

Children can't go elsewhere. They have no extended social network. Even when things are going right, childhood is a gentle open prison.

As a result of the peculiarities of our early years, we lose balance. Things within us start to develop in wayward directions. The causes of our primal wounds are rarely outwardly dramatic but their effects are rarely insignificant. such is the fragule base of childhood that nothing outwardly dramatic appalling needs to have happened to us for us to wind up inwardly profoundly scrambled.