When you’re young you think that you’re going to sail into a lovely lake of quietude and peace. This is profoundly untrue.

Lessing punctures a common youthful fantasy: that adulthood will culminate in a stable, serene “arrival” where struggle ends and life becomes orderly. By calling this expectation “profoundly untrue,” she frames restlessness, conflict, and continual change as structural features of human life rather than temporary obstacles. The image of “sailing” suggests a linear journey toward a destination; Lessing rejects that narrative in favor of a more realistic view in which peace is intermittent and hard-won, not a permanent state. The remark also carries a moral edge: maturity involves relinquishing comforting myths and learning to live without guarantees of quietude.