By education most have been misled
So they believe, because they we’re bred.
The priest continues what the nurse began,
And thus the child imposes on the man.
—John Dryden—
In the early years it often seems to the growing human child that most of civilization consists of saying “No!” Parents and teachers sometimes act as if that were so. Everyone who has ever raised, taught, or cared for small children over trivia; teachers may punish small infractions and ignore large ones. Humans raise humans; if it were possible to do it perfectly, surely we would all be angels by now.
Often we are fully grown before we’re able to let go of some of the rigid rules we learned.
Often it may seem that our task as adults is to unlearn what we have learned as infants. The “housebreaking” that has made us considerate to one another and peaceable in adjusting our differences may also have squelched some of our capacity for feeling. We can recover our feeling selves, without violating the rules of society, if we can remember not be afraid. Feelings are only frightening when we repress them; when we let them out and sweep through, then they are gone.
My feelings may be strong, but they are not evil. How could they be? I am a child of the universe.