‘Maturity’: This is one of those words that people throw around a lot, but I think, unfortunately, most people’s definition of this term, their understanding of it, ends up as a sort of abstract opposite of immaturity. ‘Immaturity,’ for these people, is the base of reference. Think of the last time you thought about maturity. Wasn’t it in reference to something which was clearly immature? Maybe you saw some kid screaming in the check-out line. Totally immature. He’ll learn, someday. Maybe more likely, you were in some heated something with somebody, maybe a colleague, maybe a friend, probably an ex or current lover. “You’re being really immature.”
The trouble with our understanding of maturity as, essentially, just the opposite of being immature, is that maturity is meant to be the ideal, the goal. Maturity is the state you want to reach. It is the behavior. As such, it is, in a sense, an action. So when all we have to say about maturity is that it is ‘not being immature,’ we aren’t left with much. Instead of saying, ‘we are to act like this,’ with a fairly clear understanding of the action involved, we are saying, “do not act like this.” This leaves us with a long, long list of don’ts.
Can you see the difficulty here? As we grow up, we are told all kinds of things not to do. Those behaviors are childish, immature. As a shortcut, we are taught that mature people don’t do certain things. The lucky among us, learn enough of these things to get by, and behave in a manner that really improves and nourishes our lives. But that’s not enough. What we should strive for is not living our lives by a set of ‘do-nots’ but, rather, a guideline which is positive and direct for social interaction.
If I were to describe maturity, what it is to be mature, it would have something to do with knowing the role you were playing in any given social interaction. Not only is it a self awareness, but an acceptance of your own motivations in any situation. Finally, it is having the pause, or temperament, to really judge between your motivations and your ultimate desire. I think what I mean here is better understood by the first question, “what is my role?”
I had this awful, horrible breakup when I was twenty-one. I think I’ve always been a fairly emotionally healthy person, meaning I’m usually pretty good at seeing myself as I am behaving and feeling, and can, in a sense, think outside those emotions. But this breakup truly tested me. A few of the short details are that I had been in a relationship with the girl for a year and felt that she was the one. Madly in love, I worked three jobs and negotiated a lot of legal stuff to get a visa and move to England to live with her permanently. And then it ended. In the ensuing weeks, I was an utter wreck. My life felt torn apart. Suddenly, all that calm repose was gone. I was calling her all the time, sometimes arguing, sometimes pleading, usually, almost always, on the verge of tears, if not well past. Then I had what I believe to be one of the most mature moments in my life. In a conversation I said, “Look, I know I’m acting like a complete ass here. I know it’s undignified, certainly pathetic, and completely unreasonable. I also know that you’ve put up a wall, that you have to shut down all that feeling for me because you know what you want and it’s not me. But I’m pretty sure this is how I have to feel. Just as I acknowledge and even, in some way, respect that you’ve got to be cold, distant, and without remorse, I’m going to respect that being completely nuts is my role. I know it’s not going to change things, and I know it’s just my way of grieving and trying to hold on to you, so I’m just going to let myself feel and be that way until I can pull back and just be sad.”
What was amazing to me was this epiphany that I was playing a role, one I actually already knew fairly well. It dawned on me how many times the situation had been reversed. I had been in relationships where, for whatever reason, I didn’t want to be involved anymore, and I started to shut down my feelings to it, and broke things off. And the girl would plead, and be sad. How many times had I thought some girl was being totally crazy or unreasonable? It was the same for me, but the roles were reversed.
It didn’t change how I felt, at least as far as the pain of the breakup and, for a short while, I still felt and acted pretty unreasonably. But, almost right away, even as I said it, I noticed a change in myself. It was a kind of acceptance of my place in the situation. As soon as I saw my position, the game I was playing, and how my character was acting, so predictably, in that game, a lot of the sway it had over me lost its power.
Maturity, then, was a kind of pause button. It was me taking a moment to see how I had been behaving, to see where it was getting me. It was an opportunity to change my behavior, as well as a kind of acceptance that disarmed much of what was automatically driving me. In short, it was responsibility for my behavior. Responsibility is observing what’s happening, taking ownership of it. It is asserting your choice through thoughtful judgment of yourself.
We get so bloody comfortable with ourselves, usually reacting the same way to the same stimulus. At work last night, there’s this colleague of mine who, well, I just don’t like her. She’s snarky, and has a bad attitude about work. I often find myself criticizing just about everything she does, even down to patronizing her with demands for “the magic word,” when she asks for something of me without saying please. It’s childish. But let’s not define the mature thing simply as not acting this way. The mature thing, from what we’ve seen so far, is to see my role in things.
Here I have a situation where we two don’t like each other. Maybe it’s valid, maybe it’s an off-on-the-wrong-foot. In the long run, it doesn’t matter. We have to work together, and it does me no good to have all of these negative feelings.
And it’s so easy to indulge in a role. When someone attacks you, you want to defend, call them on all of their faults, rethink the whole matter to find a way out. Part of this is natural, because, even if it’s on a small level, maybe someone has said something hurtful and, being hurt, you hurry to find things to take the pain away. If maturity is a matter of understanding your role in things, and then really sorting out what it is you eventually want, then it’s up to us to look at our options. We have two, as I see it. First, we look at what takes the pain away by continuing our role in the game, ie, fighting back, arguing, snide comments, etc. Think here about how good it feels to throw back that comment. My colleague, for example, chose to respond to my not agreeing with her judgment on the best way to draw blood by publicly making something out of it, as in, “Yes, well Thomas doesn’t like to do it that way, and he wasn’t really prepared anyway.” (Let me abashedly acknowledge here that, in using her as an example, I have clearly chosen my own passive-aggressive avenue, in making her the villain.) On the other hand, there are choices which may make us feel better which do not involve us continuing in the same role. So that when she called me out in front of everyone, instead of making some awful comment back to her (and god knows I wanted to) I just laughed, said, “hey, it’s 4am, I know we’re all pretty tired so I’ll sort this out and we’ll all get through it,” and then immediately brought up a new subject with a different colleague. The situation was diffused. Her comments still stung, but I chose this option because I knew that to continue in that role would mean further escalation of our already unhelpful relationship. In the end, her opinion of me doesn’t matter much, and our nights working together will be better if I don’t indulge in the back and forth that is so often instigated.
Let me say here that I don’t necessarily believe that ‘maturity’ means I should always choose to remove myself from the role. I’m not even sure it means avoiding passive aggressive behaviors. Instead, I am asserting that maturity is that self-awareness of your position in any interaction, it’s knowing your role and being able, by that perspective, to make an informed choice on how you want to behave. When the breakup happened, I saw my role. I chose to keep it up for a bit, because I also appreciated that some of that behavior, childish as it was, was a part of my grieving, and the adult in me was satisfied that I had done justice to my notion of maturity in acknowledging my feelings and keeping track that I was making the decisions on my behavior, instead of just reacting to a game I didn’t control.
This, to me, seems a much better way to live. Instead of simply trying to avoid certain actions, I have a positive guideline. I am not merely separating myself, scolding myself, controlling myself, as I do when I think, “oh, I had better not do this.” Instead, I am guided by clear behavior, ‘know my role, and what I want from it.’ My maturity is in knowing I have a choice.
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
So very interesting to thnk about. Just to stop for a moment and consider the intent of how you are acting, or more likely reacting, within a situation certainly brings clarity. I for one am often so hurt by what someone thinks of me that I simply react by trying to change tehir mind. Which really makes the whole thing about me rather then what their real point was in the beginning. Evaluating where they are coming from and what their motives might be could certainly save me some time and energy in the future.
Today I was thinking about the difference between a child and an adult today after a friend fretted over her crush (9 years her senior) treating her as a child. Of course the topic of maturity came up, so I sought out what other people thought maturity was as a starting place for a good definition. What I’ve found ranged from a set of rules to follow, to being responsible, to emotional stability, to humility and patience, to self control, and so on.
Reading several online discussions about this, the trend is that people argue a bit and end up adopting more into their definitions. They end up with ever growing lists of what maturity is. But what they really had was a list of characteristics and behaviours mature people display, not maturity itself. Of course there were some contradicting items, but I thought about it and came to the conclusion that maturity could be much better understood as something that, when possessed, would tend to lead a person to have such characteristics and behaviours, and would also tend to increase with time/experience.
The definition I came up with was “the intellectual and emotional ability to place yourself/things in perspective and then acting accordingly”. Searching around for a simpler way to say it, I came across this page and found your definition… short and sweet, a little different, but sharing the same essence. We may be on to something, you and I.
Thanks so much, Eric,
I like your look on it. Seems like you had much the same experience that I did, always finding people listing rules and things not to do. But I’d warn against using the word perspective.
On the one hand, “perspective” doesn’t mean a whole lot anymore. It’s been abused and bastardized into obscurity.
On the other hand, “perspective,” when it has its uses, is a bit vague at worst and, at best, too terribly subjective to really be informative. Maintaining perspective or gaining perspective, or whatever, seems an act akin to seeking nirvana, where the naive are always left with a sense that they are not quite there yet.
Thanks so much for your take on things. I’d be very interested to see what you think about some of my other ideas. Maybe take a look at my piece on what love is.
Yeah, I’m aware of the problematic nature of “perspective”. Such issues plague the English language (as can be seen with the word “maturity” ha). But that’s why I was looking for other ways to word my definition.
After reading your response, I figured I should just cut and paste the specific definition of “perspective” to avoid this issue: “Maturity is the intellectual and emotional ability to perceive things in their actual interrelations, and then acting accordingly”. More solid, but more of a mouthful.
I’ve since realized that my concept of maturity has started to mirror another familiar concept: critical thinking. Leading to my newest definition: “Maturity is the ability to critically assess a situation, and then acting accordingly.” It’s not as explicit spelled out, but I think it works on every level as a general case definition. I can even derive your special case (social interaction) definition from it. What do you think?
You know I love precision. And the lovely thing with language (also the frustrating thing), is how difficult it can be to really nail down a concept, especially when the goal is to make it more accessible.
I like your definitions although, again, ‘critical thinking’ is a tough one. If the ultimate goal of better understanding maturity is to make it more accessible, then we have to try to avoid concepts which come with a label but no instructions. Asking someone to use critical thinking (especially someone not accustomed to it) is like asking someone to be charming who has never had much luck with it.
Let’s think in terms of education, what positive definition might we give?
Well the more I think about it, the more critical thinking seems to be the core of maturity. You can act mature by, say, following rules, but to truly be mature seems to require some form of self reflection or thoughtful consideration, does it not? For example, to “know my role” requires such thought.
Furthermore, while high levels of critical thought are probably present in maybe 10% of the population, nearly everyone can critically think in at least some capacity. And if it really is the core of maturity, like I suspect, the fact that critical thinking is difficult to learn/use may not actually be a problem. Rather it could be representative and/or explanatory of the maturity of the general population (in fact, this makes the worthiness of this definition directly testable, had we the resources to do a wide spread behavioural study; a huge plus whether or not the correlation actually exists or not).
So at least for now I’m feeling pretty good about my general definition and using “critical thinking”. But that is not to say we can’t give positive definitions, as you call them. Your social interaction definition, for instance, is one such definition. This leads me to the [perhaps obvious] conclusion that a general definition does not directly lend itself to clarity in the way that case specific derivatives might. So if we want a positive definition, we would have to identify the type of situation first, then go from there. And it might take some work to get a nice one… it took you a couple of pages of text to work out yours.
Another issue comes to mind that makes me think we may be going about this wrong. To clarify our thinking I’ll ask you: What do you suppose is the difference between someone who merely follows a set of rules and someone who “knows their role and what they want from it” if they end up resulting in the exact same behaviour? The issue I’m having is this: since we can only know how a person behaves, and not truly know what a person thinks, should the measure of maturity not be based on their thoughts but on their actions/reactions? Or perhaps it is a matter of thought process? But in that case wouldn’t judgments of maturity be practically worthless outside of our judgment of our own self, if at all?
I suppose it’s one of those, “Which came first? Maturity or Critical Thinking?” questions.
I might suggest, as an amendment to my “maturity prescription,” something like: “A mature person realizes they have choices for behavior in any circumstance. Ask yourself what those choices are.”
And a very excellent question at the end. My favorite yet and worthy of a post in its own right.
I will refer back to that breakup example, which has served me so well. The maturity there wasn’t that I was behaving any less crazy after a breakup, but that I understood first ‘that’ I was doing it and, second, ‘why’ I was doing it. The resultant behavior, I believe, was that the crazy, as a natural part of my own grieving, was able to run its course quickly. I asked myself ‘why’ a lot less often, and accepted my grieving as just that, grieving, something to be felt and let go as I moved back to a more stable place. Really, the maturity was about knowing that feelings come and go but that the choices and the agency I felt would remain.
I’m diggin your amendment. It’s a premise and an introspective challenge all in one, in clear language. That’s really cool; seems like it could be effective.
Regarding my end question, I agree that maturity definitely transcends behaviour. My question now is, should maturity refer to even beyond the thought process that directly leads to behavior (what are my choices? how will I act?). To clarify, thoughts can lead to behavior and/or future ideas. If we delve into the realm of begetting future ideas in addition to begetting behaviour, we start impinging on the concepts of critical thinking, open mindedness, and other such topics that we could avoid if we limit our scope only to behavior. It makes things easier if we went one issue at a time without overlap, and scope limits help on that front.
I’m not sure I follow you on this last point. Please, ‘to clarify’ again.
I’m not sure I see what’s being limited or what you think is doing the limiting?
Well it really comes down to the part language plays in our lives. There are many forms of communication; verbal/written language is one of them. Words themselves are communicative representations of human conceptions.
But the brain is a feedback loop and language is integrated into our lives to the point that instead of merely being a way to convey our thoughts, it can also limit the way we conceive of things. Perhaps an example of this is when things are “lost in translation”… other languages offer words and phrases that communicate ideas in their culture that our language can only approximate.
This is why I like to explore the meaning of words. It allows us the opportunity to reforge the framework we use to think. Words are both necessarily created and limited (!!!) by their definition. And since we are reforging the definition, it is up to us to limit the scope of the concept we are defining. If we make it too general, “maturity” begins overlapping with other concepts. It is my inclination to make words overlap as little as possible to be able to convey our meaning as precisely as possible.
So now to re-clarify, your definitions have all been based around behaviour and the thought process that leads up to behaviour. But a thought process in general can lead to any number of things: behaviour of course, but also it can lead to more thinking, it can lead to emotions, it can lead to altering your perceptions, etc etc. So my question is: do think maturity should refer only to things related to behaviour? Or should maturity refer to your thought process in general? Or should maturity refer to a certain decision making process regardless of the result? How should we limit the scope here?
Personally, I think it should cover more than just behaviour. That’s why I was trying for a more general definition of it, but then it started overlapping with critical thinking and open-mindedness.
I like the decision making process version. I think the positive results and the tempered behavior will be a natural result of that, but I also think that the real result will be the potential to learn from your behaviors. To behave as a reaction, without consideration, doesn’t strike me as a particularly good platform for learning.
Of course perhaps we could throw a mighty wrench into this whole maturity exploration by saying that it’s more to do with one’s sense of agency than anything else, that being, that a person can affect their own lives. This all stems from my focus on realizing one’s choices.
Then again, one might feel quite in control of their behavior, and not be. So maybe something is missing from that direction too.
Maybe I’m missing something, but the concept of agency doesn’t seem useful here. Saying it has to do with a sense of agency… what would that entail? Isn’t SA largely subconscious and instinctual? How might an educational, positive definition read if we included it?
Also, I’m still a bit hung up on something else. It’s related to that question that you really liked a while back.
It’s great that we have a solid definition for maturity that can help us govern our decisions. But “mature” and “immature”, I believe, are (as words) largely used as a means to complement or chastise a person for their decisions/behaviour. In my experience, that role accounts for almost the entirety of usage in this context.
However, our definition does not lend itself well to this role: a person can carefully review all his options and still decide to act like an “immature” jackass. We, as outside observers, would not be able to determine the maturity of others. So our definition doesn’t just clarify what it means to be (im)mature, it changes the existing nature and usage of (im)maturity.
Give me a day or two, promise I’ll get back to these. I’ve been working on a few essays I’m reading at a show tomorrow and a magazine I’m starting for my company so, busy busy, and language must suffer. Apologies.
Oh, wherefore art thou employed? Waiting is such sweet sorrow. Etc etc etc.
Your patience is unparalleled. Meanwhile, my response:
It’s a really good point that if we look at the qualification for maturity as being that of one’s consideration for options how are we, as an observer, able to aptly judge them? The question really is, isn’t maturity something we assign to others and their actions?
Now, you’re not going to like this answer to that (and I’m not sure I yet do myself) but I’m inclined to think of this in that old, Greek way, by saying that, were a person to be aware of all the options, they might necessarily choose the “correct” one.
Now, I know, I’m hearing groans and rebellion, but, without opening up an entire, wormy can, lets ask ourselves some questions.
If a person were to understand that they had many ways to respond to something, and were they to have a general understanding of the repercussions of those actions, wouldn’t they choose the best of them?
One might argue that such understanding is impossible, and that might be true. But I’d argue that anyone who thinks, “There is more than one way to respond to this” is going to always opt for the choice that is most appropriate.
I guess, in the end, what you’re wondering is if this new idea of maturity is now separating our common use of “maturity” from “what is appropriate,” and I actually like that idea very much.