Successful Transition into Greater Maturity

Taken from Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck

Some of the major conditions, desires and attitudes that must be given up in the course of a wholly successful evolving lifetime: 

• The state of infancy, in which no external demands need to be responded to
• The fantasy of omnipotence
• The desire for total possession of one’s parent
• The dependency of childhood
• Distorted images of one’s parents
• The omnipotentiality of adolescence
• The ‘freedom’ of uncommitment
• The agility of youth
• The sexual attractiveness and /or potency of youth
• The fantasy of immortality
• Authority over one’s children
• Various forms of temporal power
• The independence of physical health
• And, ultimately, the self and life itself

Mr. Peck makes a statement that such stages in life, such as ‘mid life crisis’, can be so problematic and painful – in that successfully working our way through them we must give up cherished notions and old ways of doing and looking at things. Many are either unwilling or unable to suffer the pain of giving up the outgrown. Thus clinging to old patterns of thinking and behaving, failing to truly grow up and experience the joyful sense of rebirth that accompanies the successful transition into greater maturity.