Food for Thought: Maturity

Hello

I hope you are all doing well. I do realise the quality of my blogs have gone down from when I started back 2 years ago. I can tell myself because I read those ones and I can tell it was much better before because the passion and effort were greater. All I can say is that I will try to improve them, if not then apologies in advance.

I have a new food for thought today after so long. It is a subject that is quite important for everyone, but it is overlooked, or it is avoided because nothing can be done about it.

It is an unspoken matter in my opinion and we may use it for jokes every now and then. It is also something that nothing can be done as it is part of the human nature.

That’s right as it says above I am going to talk about maturity. If you try to find in Google the definition of mature or maturity, it will actually tell you that it’s “fully grown or developed” without any context or explanation. It can also tell you that maturity is something to do with insurance policies which I don’t know what that means and that is definitely not what I mean in here.

I am talking about the mentality or the personality characteristic in a human being and this can be broadly discussed. This time I am not by myself. I will be honest and say that I asked around a couple of my fellow friends and some very special people. By special people I mean young people. I got my friends to ask their siblings for a definition of maturity and the results are rather very interesting as you will see in a bit.

When I asked around, I got answers like maturity is the end of childhood, realising what is right and what is wrong which you can tell the differences from inside. Some people told me that maturity is ending your wishes and thinking of settling down and building a bright future. I have also received answers such as being in a state of mind when you are in uncomfortable position situations and you contribute to the best choice, not to running away from hard things in life and that maturity is more to do with outlook than actions and appearances. Surprisingly a response I received was that “Full maturity doesn't exist because nobody can actually say they're mature all the time. Everyone acts stupid makes decisions but are there people who can make good thought out decision in particular circumstances…? Yes. It varies on life, not in age but it is an attribute and dependent on the situation. Often times the youngest child or the child who does the least is the least mature because they're not burdened with the responsibility the other siblings have”.

Interesting fellows from abroad have mentioned that maturity is your norm of talking, sitting down, your thinking and more or less everything is linked to maturity, especially if you are thinking like an adult or a child. (Apologies if some of them do not make sense because I had to transliterate them from other languages).

The responses I received from my special young people have said thing like when you grow up and start acting sensible, acting good and not being stupid or not being neglected (sad; shockingly they even know words like melancholy). Others have said taking responsibility and learning from your mistakes, you would know when you make mistakes and you try to improve them also you try to improve yourself, when you are emotionally vulnerable and that it’s all about emotions. Funny reactions I got are like talking about periods and growing your chest.

I really loved all the responses and I received a lot more responses. Unfortunately, it’s hard to squeeze it all but I tried my best to add most of them. Thank you for all your responses.

Back to discussing about this matter… I want to point out some stuff from the responses and from what I face in my daily life.

First of all, why is it considered “immature” to buy or own plushies? (soft toys, not your urban dictionary definition). All it does is give me comfort and happiness. I cannot express enough how much this lovely soft stuffed animal has helped me recently when I hugged it when other human beings have done nothing but give me emotional pain. You will often hear about this “immaturity” in certain households. Little do they know their real effect on people like me.

The matter of maturity is very subjective, as you may have seen above with the great range of answers. Question is, why are some people called out to be “immature”? What may feel right to one person may not necessarily feel right to the other person and vice versa. What may feel wrong to you may feel right to someone like your friends. Following this point… do you handle this matter with enough maturity?

From a comment above, who said that maturity is when you end your wishes and you start thinking about securing a stable future for yourself. My point is… don’t you think a lot of children already do this? You may be wondering Nafiza what nonsense are you on about. Let me explain. Children from around the age of 5 (varies) start to go to school and attempt to excel in education. If you ask a lot of children, what do you want to become in the future? They may give you answers of professions like pilot, police, scientist, actor, etc. Hence, at this age they have an ambition and they want to become something successful in the future. However, they are often being pointed out to be “not mature enough”. I agree that a part of maturity may be thinking of building a future, but think about this conflict…

I may have some responses above mentioning that maturity may be about self-improvement. Again, I agree with the point. Have you ever thought how many people out there actually carry out self-reflection and attempt to improve themselves?

Yes, I understand that I am making contradictory points over other points… and this is mainly my aim. My food for thought posts should leave you thinking about the matter. You may be wondering what maturity may necessarily mean to me. This is what I think…

Maturity is taking full responsibility of your actions as long as you are old enough and are aware of your surroundings. Accepting the fact that something is right or wrong. Behaving sensibly at serious matters like societal issues as an example (and not end up laughing or making fun of such things). Ensuring or at least trying to make sure your words do not hurt other people, along with that ensuring you are not speaking insensibly towards someone or something because you really do not know what the second person is going through in their life. Respecting other people regardless of their differences and accepting people for who they are. Not distrusting other people regardless of their gender, race, religion, age, etc. (as sometimes parents can go a bit extreme “while thinking of their children’s safety). Finally, but not least… Having a balance between being selfish and selfless.

These are just some of my opinions and I could probably go on, but I won’t do so. Note out that I am fully aware that I may have mentioned it correctly or incorrectly, but this is totally subjective depending on the individual, so I will not necessarily bother seeking approval as these are my opinions… Could it be immature of me mentioning this last statement to you…?

You may have realised that I am highly interactive about such matters, trying to make sure not to spill out why I am randomly asking them “Hey, what is maturity?”. Since that was not enough for me, I went out and posted a poll on Instagram. I asked my Instagram followers the following question… “Do you consider yourself to be mature?” The results were rather interesting and left me thinking a lot… I had 57 viewers on this post. Only 20 answered my question. 75% of the voters said YES, while 25% of the voters said NO. As you can tell the others 37 viewers did not answer it… Why? Could it be that they were not bothered or simply ignoring me? Are they not sure or still questioning it? Could they be afraid of answering it wrongly? Although there is no set answer and there is no right or wrong. Think about it…

For those of you who did answer me, thank you so much for taking the time to answer me, I really appreciate it.

In conclusion, what is maturity? If needed re-read the points above and have a deep thinking.

I have thought about it a lot and I swear I can keep on thinking on it. I could keep on writing about this matter forever, but I won’t because it will be too long and believe or not… if you are reading till now, you read a 1.6k essay so congratulations! Again, what do you think on this matter and what are your thoughts and beliefs… Let me know as I love to hear other people’s answers more than thinking of my own.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post as I genuinely enjoyed writing it out. Till next time

Much love

Yours, Nafiza