Emotions suppressed, similarly, reduce a person s ability to cope realistically with life. Surely it is time we kept scientific abstraction in its place, and recognized that there are other rooms in this house of earthly experience that need furnishing also. But let us keep science, and the scientific method, in their proper place, and not invite them to decide everything that goes on in the other rooms. It is axiomatic, surely, that our children s upbringing ought to be progressive, in the sense of leading them somewhere. Immaturity is a little child throwing a temper tantrum in a public mall because he can t get what he wants.
Children discover as they grow up that life isn t always disposed to comply with their wishes.
The process of growing up is one of learning to play the odds to adapt to situations as they are, and not as one wishes they were. Immature people typically decry such adaptation as compro mise, though the compromise need be no greater than Edison s was to the necessity for conducting thou sands of experiments to find a filament that could light an incandescent bulb. Many people learn to dissemble their frustration when their hopes are disappointed, but not many learn how to banish frustration altogether. They mature a little, but not much, beyond the child with his temper tantrums. Much might have been accom plished during the time they were growing up to cure them of this infantilism.