What is maturity? A simple enough question but when I started thinking about it, I realized that it was actually not easy to answer. So why am I writing about it? Indeed, why even ask the question? Good questions. So here's my two bit worth on this subject.
Maturity is something that is never explicitly talked about. Very few people - barring perhaps philosophers - even think about. Yet almost every adult assumes it. One of the unstated definitions of being an adult is achieving a certain level of maturity. If asked if the desired level can be defined more specifically, I doubt whether anyone can answer. Maturity, or rather level of maturity, is clearly a subjective matter. It is difficult to answer because it is a behavioral state. It reflects how a person behaves in different situations whether pleasant or unpleasant. Does one become rapturously happy at the smallest piece of good fortune or suicidally depressed at the smallest bit of misfortune? Maturity is essentially appropriate behavior for the circumstances. But it is not just physical behavior. It is primarily emotional behavior. A person's emotional response to a given situation is far more important than the physical response. Frequently, the emotional response exhibits itself in physical behavior but more often it does not. This is specially true for unpleasant circumstances.
Why ask this question? Too often people exhibit less than mature behavior. It also seems to me that the overall maturity level of the world is going down. A side effect perhaps of the increasing popularity of the escapism inherent in sports and entertainment industries. Perhaps this is something worth thinking about.
Maturity is something that is never explicitly talked about. Very few people - barring perhaps philosophers - even think about. Yet almost every adult assumes it. One of the unstated definitions of being an adult is achieving a certain level of maturity. If asked if the desired level can be defined more specifically, I doubt whether anyone can answer. Maturity, or rather level of maturity, is clearly a subjective matter. It is difficult to answer because it is a behavioral state. It reflects how a person behaves in different situations whether pleasant or unpleasant. Does one become rapturously happy at the smallest piece of good fortune or suicidally depressed at the smallest bit of misfortune? Maturity is essentially appropriate behavior for the circumstances. But it is not just physical behavior. It is primarily emotional behavior. A person's emotional response to a given situation is far more important than the physical response. Frequently, the emotional response exhibits itself in physical behavior but more often it does not. This is specially true for unpleasant circumstances.
Why ask this question? Too often people exhibit less than mature behavior. It also seems to me that the overall maturity level of the world is going down. A side effect perhaps of the increasing popularity of the escapism inherent in sports and entertainment industries. Perhaps this is something worth thinking about.
1 comment:
A lot of the people have gotten it wrong or, at least, have not gotten it. I'll try the philosophers route. Maturity isn't just a list of ideal behaviors. It's more to do with what's appropriate, the key being the thought process which leads to a conscious decision. I’ve recently been trying to sort out ‘maturity’ on my own, trying to understand what it is. The problem that I see, is that most people define ‘maturity’ as an opposite of ‘immaturity,’ so that, instead of it being a specific action on its own, it’s just not behaving a certain way. This says a lot, as though we naturally assume the immature actions first, or area always wary of them. But maturity isn't, as a lot of people tend to assign it, just a matter of being precocious or even cautious.
What we need is a more specific definition of maturity, and not just some general sense of doing good or making good decisions. I don’t think it has anything to do with what you choose do do, but how you make those choices. See what you think about my take on it, in “How to Be a Grownup”
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