Much wisdom literature tells us how to live.
Far less of it explains how a human acquires the capacities required to live that way.
I was reminded of that reading Marcus Aurelius this week. He wrote:
“It is a man’s duty to stand upright, self-supporting, not supported.”
Leaving aside the sexism of the original, we might say:
it is a human task to stand upright, self-supporting, not supported.
And on one level, that is a noble ideal.
But here is the psychological problem:
For those of us who can do this reasonably well as adults, it’s easy to imagine we do it through character, discipline, or willpower.
As though we simply decided to be this way.
As though we built ourselves.
But that is rarely the full story.
Very often, the ability to stand upright psychologically is not something we created from nowhere.
It is something we learned.
Implicitly.
Procedurally.
Relationally.
In the body.
If, as a child, I was sufficiently supported, soothed, mirrored, encouraged, and allowed to develop gradually, then by adulthood I may appear “self-supporting.”
If I was (and I was) shut in a room as a baby and expected to self-soothe from the start, and punished when I couldn’t, acquiring those skills becomes much harder.
So what Marcus Aurelius calls independence may be built on thousands of earlier experiences of being supported well enough to internalise those functions.
In that sense, self-support is often the final appearance of something that began as co-regulation.
And this matters.
Because when we meet someone who cannot yet “stand upright” in this way, it is easy to become moralistic.
To imply:
just do it
be stronger
use willpower
take responsibility
sort yourself out
But often that is misleading.
And sometimes cruel.
Because many of the capacities required for emotional steadiness, self-support, self-regulation, frustration tolerance, and resilient functioning are not installed by being told what to do.
They are learned much earlier:
They are body-based skills.
Procedural skills.
Relationally acquired skills.
This is one reason so many people can read wisdom literature, understand it intellectually, agree with it completely, and still find themselves unable to live it.
The problem is not always lack of character.
Often it is that the early environment failed to provide the conditions in which the necessary capacities could be built.
Many people can tell us how to live.
Far fewer can help us acquire the capacities that make that way of living possible.
That, in large part, is my work.
Helping people build the psychological emotional skills required to embody wisdom.
So yes, Marcus Aurelius may still be right about the destination.
But many people do not fail because they reject the ideal.
They fail because no one helped them build the inner capacities required to get there.
That is not moral failure.
It is often developmental history.
And the hopeful part is this:
What was not built early can still be built later.