Don’t ask me why, but for some reason, I felt like writing something of an autobiographical think-piece (if one can call it that, we’ll see how this post goes.)
I will first preface this with a little disclaimer. This post may (or may not but probably will) contain references to my mother and things she says or has said that might paint her in something of a negative light, I just want to make it known this is not my intention, anything I say about my mother or indeed anything I make reference to is strictly to inform the opinions I am voicing, and will probably be taken out of context.
With that in mind, the subject I’m getting into today is maturity, by now most of you reading this will probably have some sort of an idea where this is going, I’ll keep the obvious parts brief. Like anyone else at some point in their lives, I have many times been accused of immaturity, with varying degrees of fairness in my opinion. I am currently 24 years old, in my 3rd year of university (bit of a late comer, but not the latest) and I consider myself to be quite hard-working (if more than a little prone to procrastination.) However I still live at home with my mother, and do not possess much of a social life outside of the university, so it is possible, and perhaps not unlikely that I am somewhat arrested in my development.
I essentially stagnated for an entire year before making the decision to come to uni (I had this crazy idea that I was going to do some form of work, I applied for many jobs online, a good deal of them voluntary very few responded and none accepted me, this may have something to do with my disability, but that’s for another post if I feel like being a bit whiny.)
You’ve probably guessed that the person who calls me immature the most is my mother, and to be fair it is sort of her job, as a parent she has to routinely attempt to guilt me into bettering myself, I understand this. However, it’s completely in vain because my mum and I evidently have vastly differing definitions of maturity.
The only way I can really quantify this is by offering up specific examples of when my maturity was called into question, and why. First the obvious one, my general areas of interest, although to be fair the extent of her knowledge in that regard is that I like a lot of stuff that is also popular with kids, (games/certain films/animated things/etc.) But it’s my belief that the medium of entertainment has no bearing on its quality, but that’s a different subject for another post. Anyway this is what I take issue with, I am of the opinion that it isn’t particularly mature to speak from a place of ignorance, and I speak of someone who, without at any point having met any of them proclaimed that all of my friends were “nutters” based entirely on the fact that at the time I was in a place of education specializing in those with special needs.
On this subject and many others, she wields the word “normal” as a Neanderthal would a club. Without at any point addressing her definition of it, even when specifically asked, and then can’t understand why it annoys me. I will break away to just mention that after spending a total of 19 years in “special needs” education I came to uni to study in a “normal” environment, and the only significant difference I noticed was that there were comparatively fewer wheelchairs.
The point of that little rant is that as much as I understand the point of parental shaming of immaturity, I am completely unaffected by it due to my inability to recognise maturity in the one levelling it at me. Given that she once attributed the fact that I had lost my virginity as a sign of maturity, (my life experience is admittedly limited, but I have seen enough to know that sexual activity has absolutely no bearing on anything but itself and certainly doesn’t require a person to be mature.) I find myself unable to accept her definition of it, and by extension her right to call mine into question. But perhaps instead of making my poor mum look bad (she means well I promise) I should actually contribute a definition of my own before bashing someone else’s.
I would define maturity, as a state of mind before anything else, I am not the most outwardly confident of people, as anyone who knows me will tell you, but one thing I have the utmost confidence in is my thinking, I consider myself to be a person of reasonable intelligence. Not a genius by any stretch of the imagination, just a habitually analytical thinker. I’ll continue by stating the blindingly obvious, there is no concrete definition of maturity, normality, or anything else a person might accuse you of lacking in your personality.
Therefore, as no concrete criteria for maturity exists a person must arrive at their own definition, but then what is the point? A cynical person might then draw the conclusion that “maturity” is just a word used to shame those with differing tendencies to your own. Having said that, the opposite of “mature” is “childish” another societal construct but not one without merit.
There is enough of a consensus on what is childish for it to be considered a word that carries weight, being the mirror opposite you might assume that all it takes to be mature is to simply not be childish. But even that is subject to individual interpretation.
This is just it, all I have ever claimed to be is someone who accepts the world as it is, as opposed to how I’d like it, and acts according to a set of values and beliefs I arrived at independently, and there is nothing among those that suggests that maturity is any more than tangentially related to action. I believe it really is the thought that counts.
But if that’s not enough to satisfy the more self-conscious I would put it to you that you may be asking the wrong questions, not “am I/are you mature?” but “what even is that?” and more importantly, “why does it matter?” I’m going to throw a quote at you now, (it’s from Wikiquote so I can’t confirm its authenticity, but I think it’s a bloody good one all the same) it’s from C.S Lewis author of the Narnia book series, I think he offers a very interesting take on the subject, of course, he says it in regards to literature but I think it applies to all aspects of life.
Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence, they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown-up.
"On Three Ways of Writing for Children" (1952) — in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1967), p. 25
To sum up that quote, if you want to be seen as mature, you’re probably not very, and I am inclined to agree with that. Maturity is a thing that growing people aspire to, and they should, otherwise everyone would stagnate and we’d be trapped in a world run by petty infantile people with no perspective…Well okay we’re fighting a long-lost battle there, but the point still stands, people should aspire to growth, but the fear of being childish is in itself a childish thing. Nobody can tell you how to act your age, time changes as people do, there’s one person who knows how “mature” or “childish” you are, and that’s you, by your own definition, whatever that may be.
After all, what’s the point in growing up if you can’t be a little bit childish sometimes?
