Another Marilla Thing

Having recently been on the receiving end of some good-natured teasing about "being bipolar," I'm pondering this section of what Maggie and I read today.  How does a person moderate herself?  And what does it do when we try to change someone's nature, another's or our own?


From chapter 22 of Anne of Green Gables:

For Anne to take things calmly would have been to change her nature.  All "spirit and fire and dew," as she was, the pleasures and pains of life came to her with trebled intensity.  Marilla felt this and was vaguely troubled over it, realizing that the ups and downs of existence would probably bear hardly on this impulsive soul, and not sufficiently understanding that the equally great capacity for delight might more than compensate.  Therefore Marilla conceived it to be her duty to drill Anne into a tranquil uniformity of disposition as impossible and alien to her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of the brook shallows.  She did not make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted to herself.  The downfall of some dear hope or plan plunged Anne into "deeps of affliction."  The fulfillment thereof exalted her to dizzy realms of delight.  Marilla had almost begun to despair of ever fashioning this waif of the world into her model little girl of demure manners and prim deportment.  Neither would she have believed that she really liked Anne much better as she was. 



And...
does this have anything to do with what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12 about the thorn in his flesh and being "exalted beyond measure by the abundance of the revelations"?