Reflections on emotional intelligence, maturity, and the choices that remain

(By Hella Ahmed) I used to believe — like so many people — that emotional intelligence was the magic fix: that if everyone just understood emotions better, the world and human relationships would dramatically improve. I no longer think that’s true.

When knowing changes nothing

You can understand someone perfectly well and still choose to hurt them. You can know exactly what the right thing is and deliberately do the opposite. So when someone mistreats you, don’t automatically assume they’re just “not emotionally mature yet” or that your patience and empathy will eventually awaken something better in them. Sometimes they already know — and they simply don’t care enough to change.

What remains fascinating about emotional intelligence, though, is how suddenly and massively it can grow. Some experiences are genuinely transformative. 

Moments that rewrite the heart

A man can spend years living selfishly, chasing only his own pleasure and emotional safety — even cheating on his pregnant wife — and then one morning he holds his newborn child. In an instant, everything shifts. His heart is flooded by a fierce, overwhelming love for this tiny, fragile, trembling being. Gratitude surges toward the woman who carried and gave life. And in that moment he makes a promise — maybe silently, maybe out loud — to respect her, to protect them both, no matter what. 

Maybe he later on met someone new—since he and his baby mama parted and are no longer a couple, but he kept circling back to his ex-wife—disrespecting both women in the process. He fed false hope to the past (“I’ll never give another woman what I couldn’t give you”) while feeding false hope to the present (“One day, once I’ve healed, I’ll be ready to fully commit to us”).

Is that emotional intelligence? Is that emotional maturity?

Or take another man — arrogant, egotistical, the kind who drifted through his days tossing demeaning comments about women, declaring his own beauty standards a universal law, laughing out loud after every rude remark as though no one’s feelings deserved a pause, as though no woman’s pride could or should escape his judgment.

Then one day he saw her — a stranger who felt at once like family, like an ancient soul he had already known in fantasies he never quite remembered. She looked straight into his eyes and it was like a shock. In a split second, the crowded space inside him where he had piled resentment and disdain out of hurt and ignorance was suddenly emptied. In its place rushed love, hope, respect, and vivid dreams of belonging together — of building an empire of success filled with joy and solid enchantment.

The gap that matters 

A spiritual awakening can indeed be a powerful sign that emotional intelligence — and perhaps even emotional maturity — is growing inside you. You begin to speak of light, of alignment, of being in sync with your true self and with the people who truly deserve your presence. You hold onto your humanity at its highest expression. You start to notice that you feel energies, that your body often knows the truth before your mind gets lost in the noise, that your heart is far more than an organ pumping blood.

Only perhaps you’re becoming emotionally mature — because there’s a vast difference between knowing, feeling, and actually acting on it.

Emotional intelligence — the ability to read and manage one’s own emotions and those of others, closely tied to mentalisation, our capacity to imagine what others are thinking and feeling — rests mainly on cognitive empathy (the understanding of the reasoning behind people’s behaviour) together with keen awareness of emotional signals. Emotional maturity calls for something deeper: well-regulated emotional empathy — the ability to feel with others without being overwhelmed — combined with impulse control, accountability, and commitment to lasting relationships.

Same heart, different choice

Humans make choices strategically. They can dissociate when it serves them and reconnect to the source — to love and genuine care — whenever they decide to. That is why you can witness the same person who never showed you empathy or discernment while mistreating you turn kind, respectful, even tender toward someone else. The capacity was always there; the choice simply wasn’t made in your direction.

Hella Ahmed 2026 © All rights reserved – Find my books on Amazon