We script our own psyche. We each journey alone. The path that we take through life proves to be every person’s supreme test of mental, physical, and emotional stamina, and the final determiner of his or her intellectual, ethical, and spiritual attainment.

Every child matures, which is both a blessing and a damn shame. Children can imagine worlds that never exist, worlds far more interesting and consoling than an adult knows.

A person begins childhood with a mind that is essentially a blank slate – a tabula rasa – before receiving outside impressions. Early childhood experiences and perceptions begin the formulation of a state of conscious awareness, the infantile steps in forming a personality, developing social and emotional behavior, and acquiring practical and book knowledge. Childhood plays a critical role in forming our final version of a self-concept.

Life includes unforeseen incidents that prove critical to promote personal growth. Life rarely gives us what we want. We are lucky if life gives us what we need in order to fulfill the path that was in place at our birthing.

Old age is especially cruel to vain men. Aging and its accompanying iniquities brings physical and intellectual decline and spiritual indisposition, depriving egotistical men of their superfluous pleasures.

As we age, our one great regret is the growing loss of our personal energy. Our second regret is a youthful lack of direction when we possessed physical and mental vigor.

Growing old is humbling and it takes effort to accomplish this stage of life with dignity.

A youth is susceptible to the influence of idealist notions. As a person ages, they notice a gap between their expectations and reality and they grow more pessimistic about the world and their ability to live up to the lofty notions that inspired a younger self.

Unresolved issues from childhood revisit us in adulthood.