Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence really means; Debbie Millman's lovely letter to kids about how books solace us

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[Alain de Botton on Existential Maturity and What Emotional Intelligence Really Means]( [schooloflife_book.jpg?fit=320%2C484]( “Maturity is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts,” poet and philosopher David Whyte wrote in [one of his most beautiful meditations](. A generation before him, Anaïs Nin took up the subject in [her diary]( which is itself a work of philosophy: “If you intensify and complete your subjective emotions, visions, you see their relation to others’ emotions. It is not a question of choosing between them, one at the cost of another, but a matter of completion, of inclusion, an encompassing, unifying, and integrating which makes maturity.” And yet emotional maturity is not something that happens unto us as a passive function of time. It is, as Toni Morrison well knew, [“a difficult beauty, an intensely hard won glory”]( — the product of intentional character-sculpting, the slow and systematic chiseling away of our childish impulses for tantrums, for sulking, for instant self-gratification without regard for others, for weaponizing our feelings of shame, frustration, and loneliness. [Like happiness]( — another life-skill we have miscategorized as a passive abstraction — it requires early education, consistent relearning, and unrelenting practice. That is what [Alain de Botton]( one of our era’s most uncommonly perceptive, lyrical, and lucid existential contemplatives, offers in [The School of Life: An Emotional Education]( ([public library]( — the book companion to his wonderful [global academy for self-refinement]( a decade in the making. [ab1.jpg?resize=680%2C656] Alain de Botton De Botton considers the type of learning with which the road to emotional maturity is paved: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]The knack of our species lies in our capacity to transmit our accumulated knowledge down the generations. The slowest among us can, in a few hours, pick up ideas that it took a few rare geniuses a lifetime to acquire. Yet what is distinctive is just how selective we are about the topics we deem it possible to educate ourselves in. Our energies are overwhelmingly directed toward material, scientific, and technical subjects and away from psychological and emotional ones. Much anxiety surrounds the question of how good the next generation will be at math; very little around their abilities at marriage or kindness. We devote inordinate hours to learning about tectonic plates and cloud formations, and relatively few fathoming shame and rage. The assumption is that emotional insight might be either unnecessary or in essence unteachable, lying beyond reason or method, an unreproducible phenomenon best abandoned to individual instinct and intuition. We are left to find our own path around our unfeasibly complicated minds — a move as striking (and as wise) as suggesting that each generation should rediscover the laws of physics by themselves. [MouniFeddag.jpg?resize=680%2C944] Art by Mouni Feddag for a letter by Alain de Botton from [A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader](. Available as a [print](. This irrational orientation to our emotional lives, De Botton argues, is our inheritance from the Romantics, who crowned the untrained intuition the supreme governing body of human conduct. (And yet the Romantics contained multitudes — for all their belief in the unalterable givenness of emotional reality and the fidelity of feeling, they had a glimmering recognition that reason must be consciously applied to reining in the wildness of the emotions. Mary Shelley, offspring of [the greatest power couple of political philosophy]( placed at the heart of [Frankenstein]( — one of the most prescient and psychologically insightful works of literature ever composed, triply so for being the work of an eighteen-year-old girl — an admonition against the unbridled reign of the ego’s emotional cravings unchecked by reason and forethought of consequence.) Exception aside, De Botton’s broader point is excellent: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]The results of a Romantic philosophy are everywhere to see: exponential progress in the material and technological fields combined with perplexing stasis in the psychological one. We are as clever with our machines and technologies as we are simple-minded in the management of our emotions. We are, in terms of wisdom, little more advanced than the ancient Sumerians or the Picts. We have the technology of an advanced civilization balancing precariously on an emotional base that has not developed much since we dwelt in caves. We have the appetites and destructive furies of primitive primates who have come into possession of thermonuclear warheads. In 1983, the psychologist Howard Gardner devised his seminal [theory of multiple intelligences]( expanding our narrow cultural definition of intelligence as verbal and mathematical skill to include seven other modes of intellectual ability. A decade later, Daniel Goleman added a tenth form of intelligence — [emotional intelligence]( — which quickly permeated the fabric of popular culture as hoards of humans felt suddenly recognized in an endowment long neglected as a valuable or even extant faculty of consciousness. Building on that legacy, De Botton brings his own sensitive perspicacity to a richer, more dimensional definition: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]The emotionally intelligent person knows that love is a skill, not a feeling, and will require trust, vulnerability, generosity, humor, sexual understanding, and selective resignation. The emotionally intelligent person awards themselves the time to determine what gives their working life meaning and has the confidence and tenacity to try to find an accommodation between their inner priorities and the demands of the world. The emotionally intelligent person knows how to hope and be grateful, while remaining steadfast before the essentially tragic structure of existence. The emotionally intelligent person knows that they will only ever be mentally healthy in a few areas and at certain moments, but is committed to fathoming their inadequacies and warning others of them in good time, with apology and charm… There are few catastrophes, in our own lives or in those of nations, that do not ultimately have their origins in emotional ignorance. De Botton is careful to acknowledge that this line of inquiry might trigger the modern intellectual allergy to the genre of learning dismissively labeled self-help. And yet he reminds us that [the quest for self-refinement]( has always accompanied the human experience and animated each civilization’s most respected intellects — it is there at the heart of [the Stoics]( and in [the essays of Montaigne]( and at the center of [Zen Buddhism]( and in the literary artistry of [Proust]( (whom De Botton has [especially embraced]( as a fount of existential consolation). He aims a spear of simple logic to the irrational and rather hubristic disdain for self-help: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]To dismiss the idea that underpins self-help — that one might at points stand in urgent need of solace and emotional education — seems an austerely perverse prejudice. [myheart_luyken2.jpg] Art by Corinna Luyken from [My Heart]( — an emotional intelligence primer in the form of an uncommonly tender illustrated poem. Our cultural failure at making emotional intelligence an educable thing, De Botton argues, stems from two flawed baseline assumptions of our education system itself — its focus on what people are taught over how they are taught, and its tendency to [mistake information for wisdom](. (Adrienne Rich shone a sidewise gleam on these flaws and their remedy in her superb 1977 convocation address about [why an education is something you claim, not something you get]( De Botton envisions the emotionally enlightened alternative: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]An emotional education may require us to adopt two different starting points. For a start, how we are taught may matter inordinately, because we have ingrained tendencies to shut our ears to all the major truths about our deeper selves. Our settled impulse is to blame anyone who lays our blind spots and insufficiencies bare, unless our defenses have first been adroitly and seductively appeased. In the face of critically important insights, we get distracted, proud, or fidgety. We may prefer to do almost anything other than take in information that could save us. Moreover, we forget almost everything. Our memories are sieves, not robust buckets. What seemed a convincing call to action at 8 a.m. will be nothing more than a dim recollection by midday and an indecipherable contrail in our cloudy minds by evening. Our enthusiasms and resolutions can be counted upon to fade like the stars at dawn. Nothing much sticks. It was the philosophers of ancient Greece who first identified these problems and described the structural deficiencies of our minds with a special term. They proposed that we suffer from akrasia, commonly translated as “weakness of will,” a habit of not listening to what we accept should be heard and a failure to act upon what we know is right. It is because of akrasia that crucial information is frequently lodged in our minds without being active in them, and it is because of akrasia that we often both understand what we should do and resolutely omit to do it. How to overcome akrasia and live with life-enlarging emotional intelligence — by absorbing the beauty and wisdom encoded in literature and art, by harnessing the power of ritual, by undertaking the difficult, immensely rewarding and redemptive work of self-knowledge — is what De Botton offers in the remainder of the throughly helpful [The School of Life: An Emotional Education](. Complement this small prefatory excerpt with philosopher Martha Nussbaum on [the intelligence of emotions]( then revisit De Botton on [what makes a good communicator]( [the psychological paradox of sulking]( and his lovely letter to children about [why we read](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving In 2019, the 13th year of Brain Pickings, I poured tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into this labor of love, which remains free and is made possible by patronage. If you found any joy and consolation here this year, please consider supporting it with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now](  [Give Now]( [Debbie Millman’s Touching Letter to Children About How Books Solace Our Heartbreak and Salve Our Existential Loneliness]( [avelocityofbeing_cover-1.jpg?fit=320%2C427]( In her visionary 1826 novel [The Last Man]( — an apocalyptic journey to the end of humanity, unfolding into a sublime philosophical meditation on how to live with unutterable existential loneliness — Mary Shelley, whose [brilliant mother]( had died giving birth to her and who had buried three of her own children, her sister, and the love of her life by the age of twenty-five, poses to her autobiographically based protagonist the supreme challenge of existence: In a world made desolate by a plague that has snatched all his loved ones, all his compatriots, and eventually all his fellow human beings, leaving him the solitary endling of the species, how does he go on living? Where does he find sustenance not just for the biological process but for his mental, emotional, and spiritual survival? Shelley sends him to Rome — the city where, after laying the body of her infant daughter in an unmarked grave, she herself had slowly been resuscitated from grief. Wandering the streets of the Eternal City, alone and alien, accompanied only by a loyal dog, her protagonist finds his first taste of consolation, his first glimmer of the will to live, in the verses of Virgil, in the books at the majestic library of Rome, containing the sum total of humanity’s wisdom — for the work of literature and philosophy, as [Montaigne reminds us]( across the abyss of epochs, is to teach us how to live with death. Reading The Last Man in a desolate season of my own life and finding in it the meta-solace Shelley’s protagonist found in literature, I was suddenly grateful anew for how books can so buoy us from the pit of being, and was reminded of Debbie Millman’s wonderful contribution to [A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader]( ([public library](. [DashaTolstikova_DebbieMillan.jpg?resize=680%2C907] Original art by Dasha Tolstikova for Debbie Millman’s letter from [A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader]( edited by Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick. She writes: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]Dear Reader, I want to tell you that everything will be okay. I want to tell you that it will get better. I want to tell you that it all works out in the end. But sometimes it doesn’t. Most times it is hard and we usually end up getting used to it. But there is something you can do in response: read. Read until your heart breaks and you can’t stand it anymore. Read until you have paper cuts from turning pages or blisters from swiping a screen. You see, here’s the thing: even at their worst, books won’t abandon you. If they make you cry it’s only because they are that good. You can depend on books. They will always be there for you. Their patience is infinite and they [have been known to save lives](. They can help you become a smarter, more interesting person. Books can probably help you get dates, though I don’t recommend you ask that much of them too often (you don’t want to limit their power). Books — like dogs — are among a handful of things on this planet that just want to be loved. And they will love you back, generously and selflessly, requiring very little in return — until they are complete, their light and their wisdom and their hearts sputtering to an inevitable, lonely end. Debbie Millman For more tastes of [A Velocity of Being]( — a [labor of love eight years in the making]( all proceeds from which benefit the New York public library system — savor other wondrous letters to children: [Rebecca Solnit]( [Jane Goodall]( [Alain de Botton]( [Jacqueline Woodson]( [Ursula K. Le Guin]( [Alexander Chee]( [Kevin Kelly]( and 100-year-old Holocaust survivor [Helen Fagin]( then feast your eyes and heart on some [stunning original art from the book]( celebrating the joys, consolations, and life-expanding rewards of reading. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( [French Artist Paul Sougy’s Stunning Mid-Century Scientific Illustrations of Plants, Animals, and the Human Body]( On a recent visit with a friend and her newborn daughter, I was completely taken with an enormous scientific diagram of a snail hanging by the crib, aglow with the thrill of science and the unmistakable vibrancy of mid-century graphic design. I asked about it — she said it was a vintage French classroom poster she had acquired at the Oakland Flea Market. Determined to find out more about its creator, I had only the tiny inscription in the bottom right-hand corner to go on: “P. Sougy, 1955.” [sougy_snail.jpg?resize=680%2C901] Paul Sougy: The Snail. Available [as a print](. This is what I discovered after weeks of trawling catalogs, libraries, antiquarian bookstores, and French government archives: In the 1940s, Paul Sougy — a curator of natural history at the science museum of the French city of Orléans, and a gifted artist — was commissioned by the estate of the pioneering 18th-century French naturalist and anatomist Louis Thomas Jérôme Auzoux to create a series of illustrations based on Auzoux’s work, to be used in textbooks, workbooks, transparencies, and large-scale educational charts for classroom walls. [FrenchSchoolchildren_1900s.jpg?resize=680%2C975] French schoolchildren in science class, early 1900s (Musée national de l’Éducation) Over the next two decades, Sougy proceeded to draw some uncommonly beautiful and distinctive diagrams of the natural world: bats and butterflies and sea urchins; pines and ferns and peas; the human brain and heart and respiratory system; the fly, [Willam Blake’s existential muse]( the horse, that [emancipator of human love]( moss, that [subtle teacher in the art of seeing](. Today, all that is remembered of Sougy is the tiny 270-meter street in Orléans named for him, as his gorgeous drawings — his life’s work — perish out of print, to be chanced upon by young twenty-first-century mothers at flea markets. Having culled as many of these gems as I could find from various government repositories, vintage textbooks, and classroom posters — crinkled and worn, savaged by time and schoolchildren’s eager hands — I have endeavored to restore them and make them available as prints for the scientific edification and aesthetic delight of generations to come, with a portion of all proceeds going toward [The Nature Conservancy]( in support of their noble, necessary work to preserve the living splendor and biodiversity of this irreplaceable planet. [sougy_bat.jpg?resize=680%2C877] Paul Sougy: The Bat. Available [as a print](. [sougy_lizard.jpg?resize=680%2C884] Paul Sougy: The Lizard. Available [as a print](. [sougy_butterfly.jpg?resize=680%2C894] Paul Sougy: The Butterfly. Available [as a print](. [sougy_cat.jpg?resize=680%2C878] Paul Sougy: The Cat. Available [as a print](. [sougy_frog.jpg?resize=680%2C909] Paul Sougy: The Frog. Available [as a print](. [sougy_cuttlefish.jpg?resize=680%2C891] Paul Sougy: The Cuttlefish. Available [as a print](. [sougy_corals.jpg?resize=680%2C882] Paul Sougy: Coral. Available [as a print](. [sougy_mole.jpg?resize=680%2C886] Paul Sougy: The Mole. Available [as a print](. [sougy_horse.jpg?resize=680%2C869] Paul Sougy: The Horse. Available [as a print](. [sougy_cow.jpg?resize=680%2C881] Paul Sougy: The Cow. Available [as a print](?curator=brainpicker). [sougy_pig.jpg?resize=680%2C857] Paul Sougy: The Pig. Available [as a print](. [sougy_ape.jpg?resize=680%2C872] Paul Sougy: The Ape. Available [as a print](. [sougy_rabbit.jpg?resize=680%2C881] Paul Sougy: The Rabbit. Available [as a print](. [sougy_pigeon_s6.jpg?resize=680%2C920] Paul Sougy: The Pigeon. Available [as a print](. [sougy_perch.jpg?resize=680%2C888] Paul Sougy: The Perch. Available [as a print](. [sougy_mussel.jpg?resize=680%2C899] Paul Sougy: The Mussel. Available [as a print](. [sougy_hydra.jpg?resize=680%2C868] Paul Sougy: The Hydra. Available [as a print](. [sougy_crayfish.jpg?resize=680%2C899] Paul Sougy: The Crayfish. Available [as a print](. [sougy_spider.jpg?resize=680%2C885] Paul Sougy: The Spider. Available [as a print](. [sougy_beetle.jpg?resize=680%2C885] Paul Sougy: The Beetle. Available [as a print](. [sougy_bee.jpg?resize=680%2C879] Paul Sougy: The Bee. Available [as a print](. [sougy_fly.jpg?resize=680%2C873] Paul Sougy: The Fly. Available [as a print](. [sougy_cicada.jpg?resize=680%2C887] Paul Sougy: The Cicada. Available [as a print](. [sougy_grasshopper.jpg?resize=680%2C889] Paul Sougy: The Grasshopper. Available [as a print](. [sougy_heart.jpg?resize=680%2C900] Paul Sougy: The Human Heart. Available [as a print](. [sougy_eye.jpg?resize=680%2C909] Paul Sougy: The Human Eye. Available [as a print](. [sougy_digestive.jpg?resize=680%2C912] Paul Sougy: The Human Digestive System. Available [as a print](. [sougy_lungs.jpg?resize=680%2C930] Paul Sougy: The Human Human Lung. Available [as a print](. [sougy_skin.jpg?resize=680%2C911] Paul Sougy: The Human Skin. Available [as a print](. [sougy_skull.jpg?resize=680%2C889] Paul Sougy: The Human Skull. Available [as a print](. [sougy_nerves.jpg?resize=680%2C888] Paul Sougy: Human Nerves. Available [as a print](. [sougy_moss.jpg?resize=680%2C887] Paul Sougy: Moss. Available [as a print](. [sougy_fern.jpg?resize=680%2C876] Paul Sougy: The Fern. Available [as a print](. [sougy_flowers.jpg?resize=680%2C845] Paul Sougy: The Buttercup. Available [as a print](. [sougy_pine.jpg?resize=680%2C881] Paul Sougy: The Pine. Available [as a print](. [sougy_pollen.jpg?resize=680%2C877] Paul Sougy: Pollen. Available [as a print](. [sougy_beans.jpg?resize=680%2C907] Paul Sougy: The Bean. Available [as a print](. [sougy_peas.jpg?resize=680%2C891] Paul Sougy: The Pea. Available [as a print](. [sougy_wheat.jpg?resize=680%2C872] Paul Sougy: Wheat. Available [as a print](. [sougy_seaurchin.jpg?resize=680%2C889] Paul Sougy: The Sea Urchin. Available [as a print](. Complement with the [gorgeous natural history paintings]( of the trailblazing 18th-century artist Sarah Stone, then revisit Peter Rabbit creator Beatrix Potter’s [stunning paintings of mushrooms]( which revolutionized mycology and still help scientists identify species. Special thanks to the [archives]( of the University of Artois [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving In 2019, the 13th year of Brain Pickings, I poured tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into this labor of love, which remains free and is made possible by patronage. If you found any joy and consolation here this year, please consider supporting it with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now](  [Give Now]( [---] You're receiving this email because you subscribed on Brain Pickings. This weekly newsletter comes out on Sundays and offers the week's most unmissable articles. Brain Pickings NOT A MAILING ADDRESS 159 Pioneer StreetBrooklyn, NY 11231 [Add us to your address book]( [unsubscribe from this list](   [update subscription preferences](