maturity

Looking around myself, I wonder some days about my own status in the adult society. Afterall, I'm 24, married, I own a dog and I'm working on my first 30-year mortgage and paying extra on it every month. Yet I am still in the transitional phase between my college youth and the mature adult I'm doomed to become. So, this reigns in the question: What is maturity?

Is it a mortgage, a dachsund, a wife and a full-time job? Many people around me are relying on this definition, but they have no suspicion of the severe doubt in my mind. From a religious standpoint (Christian, that is... NOT republican... I'll deal with the affiliation of political parties to world religions at a later date), maturity is relative and insignificant. There is right and wrong and a subjectivity to some interpretation, a heaven and hell (again, subjective), and the prophetic wisdom of the great biblical figures. Jesus himself said (in so many words) that the best way to heaven, or to finding favor with God, is to be like children. Does this mean to abandon "maturity"?

Merriam-Webster defines maturity here.

Have I "completed natural growth and development"? Have I "attained a final or desired state"? Am I "due for payment"?
Or my favorite: "belonging to the middle portion of a cycle of erosion."

So, am I in the middle portion of my erosion cycle? I guess not, assuming I'm to live here a full 80-100 years. Based on this argument, I'm officially "immature." Non-eroded. At the beginning of my billing cycle. (you get the idea)

But go back to that "final or desired state" definition. This interests me, because only from a secular perspective does this apply to both mentality and physical being. Toss in a little spirituality, and you have a contradiction. Well, really you have the physical eliminated and what remains is only spiritual. Given this definition, and based on the belief of an afterlife, the state of maturity is unattainable until death and spiritual rebirth.

Of course, that's Webster's definition, and everybody has their own.

My personal definition, I think, is a fusion of Webster's, Christianity's, and a pinch of my own thought process (God forbid). I believe that we are only reaching maturity when we are fully eroded, as in closest to death, because at that point (assuming it's an expected and timely death) we are letting go of our lives and getting closer to God. (thank you Trent Reznor)

Again, I'll elaborate more on birth, death, religion, politics and everything to do with the meaning of life at a later time. I'm just too lazy to explain it all right now. I'll also explain why I don't think it's necessary for me to explain it to you. But not without explanation. Promise.

In the end, we are all children and never exit this phase until we are dead and out of our shells. That's maturity. When you realize that we are all children, and open your mind to the idea that none of us--none of us--have a smidgeon of a clue about what we're doing here or why anything happens the way that it does. That is enlightenment. That is the first step to maturity. Any 13-year-old can pay mortgage and walk a dog and be in a serious relationship (I know, marriage is usually permanent. Step off!). So can any retiree. The adolescents can be aware that they are children. Can an adult?

I think what most people see as "grown up" is really a clouded perspective about their own behavior. It's an absolute, and absolutes don't exist in the human condition. The next time someone tells you "that was a very mature thing to say" or "stop being so immature", just throw it in their face that they're really not even infantile because they haven't yet realized their own helpless vulnerability to the powers that surround them, and therefore haven't reached the most mature possible stage in this life: Toddler.

dfb