Will Form 8815 Matures 2023-2024

We know well enough that we are equipped with an innate drive for physical growth. The human animal is geared to keep developing towards its outward mature form, adding muscle, bone, and fatty tissue in a spontaneous process of development. This process begins in our earliest days in the womb and ends around our 16th year. What is less obvious is that we are marked by an equally innate, equally powerful, although not mystical, drive towards emotional growth. Unless we are impeded by internal or external obstacles, we are set on an inner lockable path towards emotional development. An obvious conceptual difference between the two drives is that we can easily enough know what it means to be fully grown physically, but it is rather harder to pin down what emotional maturity might look like. We can hazard a two-fold answer. Our emotional drive is made up of two strands. The first is a will towards ever greater and deeper connection. The second comprises a will towards ever greater and deeper self-expression. To consider connection first, we are marked by an intense wish to move away from loneliness, shame, and isolation, and to find opportunities for understanding, sincerity, and communion. We long to share with friends, lovers, and new acquaintances an authentic picture of what it means to be us and, at the same time, to enter deeply into their feelings and experiences. Love is merely a subsection of the drive to connect, which extends across a range of activities and types of relationships, stretching to encompass the body and our desire for physical intimacy, touch, and sexual play. We can count ourselves as emotionally healthy, in large measure, according to the degree of connection we have in our lives. By the drive for self-expression, we mean the desire to fathom, bring...