Capacitence, fullfilling obligations, prisioner of childhood

Dr. Jeffery Malmer on Preger is talking about maturity as an aspect of happiness. Capacitence is the ability to handle stress without lashing out. Now that's something I could have used years ago. I am well aware that I was immature emotionally for the longest time and one of the things that bothered me the most was the outburst of anger when things didn't go well. It's classic behavior in a way. The person with these problems tries to arrange his or her's life so that everything is predictable and stressless. This can not be however and only makes the intrusion of worldly woes all the more upsetting. The answer is to build the capacity to absorb the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and "be happy".

The joy of fullfilling obligations has never been a problem. The only problem has been trying to explain why I took satisfaction on just showing up on time. I like getting to the doctor's for my appointment early. Even though it meant that I had to kill time browsing through old germ ridden magazines.

As far as the Prisioner of childhood concept, I did waste a lot of time mulling over childhood events. I was always looking for a pattern that would explain it all. I now realize that was an useless endeavor. It's interesting that Alice Miller's book "The Drama of the Gifted Child" was originally named "The Prisioner of Childhood". I loved that book and was happy to here Preger and Dr. Malmer speak well of it. Spending any time blaming your current situation on one's childhood is not the road to happiness.