"I began to guess that my self’s need was for an equilibrium..."

“By now I had reviewed all my past attempts to find happiness by following the instructions of mental training experts.  Gradually a conclusion began to emerge.  Instead of, as always before, assuming that they were right and therefore my inability to read the promised result must be due to my own weakness, I began to ask whether this really was the way to find what I wanted.  I had been continually exhorted to define my purpose in life, but I was now beginning to doubt whether life might not be too complex a thing to be kept within the bounds of a single formulated purpose, whether it would not burst its way out, or if the purpose were too strong, perhaps grow distorted like an oak whose trunk has been encircled with an iron band.  I began to guess that my self’s need was for an equilibrium, for sun, but not too much, for rain, but not always.  I felt that it was as easily surfeited with one kind of experience as the body with one kind of food, and that it had a wisdom of its own, if only I could learn to interpret it.”

Marion Milner, A Life of One’s Own

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