Disclaimer: I am not writing this as a purported expert on maturity. Far from it. I, like every other person, have struggled with the themes and situations that speak to the essence of maturity. I, like many others, have a memory of failure for every success in my life. Maturity is a greatly important and omnipresent issue facing me and every adult. My hope is that thinking critically on the concept and attempting to demystify it to an extent will be a useful endeavor. The goal in any situation is to approach it in a mature way. My belief is that this goal becomes easier if we have a better idea of exactly what maturity is. I have some thoughts, but they certainly aren’t exhaustive. In fact, my finite list from an even more finite perspective begs to be expanded upon.

I’ve given a lot of thought to the concept of maturity. It’s an awfully broad term, even confusing. For all of its complexity, the word seems to be thrown around a lot. Whether it’s claims of maturity or accusations of immaturity, it seems to be a pretty complex idea used often and sometimes oversimplified or misunderstood.

To be clear: Maturity isn’t avoiding conflict. Maturity isn’t dismissed anger, or frustration or jealousy. In fact, the inability to identify, approach and properly handle conflict is immature. Not identifying that every emotion, positive and negative, has validity is immature.

But that is what maturity is not. A list of what something isn’t does not constitute a good definition.

I have a list of ideas that I think will help come up with at least a partial definition for maturity:
1. Aim
2. Balance
3. Awareness
4. Action
5. Control

Aim.
Maturity is not aimless. It has an intuitive idea of the direction you should go. Further, maturity acts on this knowledge. Consistency is very important here. Having a consistent aim for a framework for moral action is important to maturity. It is not mature to feel like doing whatever you feel in the moment is justified. Aside from morality, another central component of aim is goals. It’s one thing to have a plan to go to school, get great grades, graduate and get hired starting at $100K a year. It is another situation entirely to be faced with the choice of writing a 10 page paper that’s due by the end of the week or watching a marathon of your favorite television show or going out. If you realize that you don’t have the discipline for the goals you have, you should probably reassess your goals. Ask yourself, why do I feel it’s so important to do so well in school? Why do I feel that I need to make X amount of money? Discipline is definitely an important component of aim. However, I believe there is one caveat to mention, and that comes with the next idea I want to discuss.

Balance.
Maturity is not consumed with a single thing. It is neither hedonistic nor anhedonic. Greed is the enemy of balance. Being money-hungry, power-hungry, or attention-hungry is fundamentally immature. Being self-consumed, idolizing, obsessing… All of these things are in direct conflict with the pursuit of maturity.

It is important to have discipline. Yet, it is just as important to avoid rigidity and allow for flexibility. Strike a balance between work and play. You’ll find you have more energy and overall more to offer to your work, and you’ll probably enjoy your leisure time more, as well. Strike a balance between self-serving and doing for others. Nobody likes a selfish person. And they shouldn’t. The inability to derive pleasure from helping others without any expectations in return is very immature. At the same time, if you serve somebody else too much, the selfish part of their nature will come to the surface and you will find yourself fully assuming the role of servant. Anybody will use you if you let them use you; it’s human nature.

Awareness.
Contemplation and acknowledgement are core necessities to maturity. Ignoring ideas because they might challenge your own is immature. Deliberately seeking the comfort of ignorance is immature. In fact, it’s downright immoral if the aim of maintaining ignorance is to avoid responsibility or guilt.

The importance of awareness for maturity is best exemplified in terms of emotions. Being aware of the emotions of others is critical to maturity. Equally important, however, is having awareness of your own emotions.

For all of its importance, awareness is nothing to maturity without the next thing on my list.

Action.
Maturity is an idea. But more so, maturity is action. It isn’t enough to be aware of your own emotions. Knowing how to act properly on those emotions is necessary for maturity. As I said earlier, there is validity to any emotion that we can feel. There is not, however, validity to any action we take because of those emotions. And being aware of the emotions of others isn’t sufficient for maturity either. Going back to balance and aim, there needs to be a good balance between thought and action. Planning is good, planning without action is idealistic inaction. Action is good, action without planning is rash.

Control
The final idea in my list might be the most important. And it is intimately interwoven with the others. When I say control, I don’t just mean trying to exert maximum control in a situation. That is very immature. I mean striking a balance. I mean having an awareness of your own sphere of control. This is important for several reasons. One, it is important to know when you don’t have control or shouldn’t try to exert control on a situation. You may be overstepping your bounds, or maybe you are just trying too hard to control something that is bigger than you. Either way, no good can come of it. Second, an awareness of your own sphere of control is pivotal to the moral idea of duty. If you have influence over something, and you should be exerting your control for some positive result, inaction in the name of convenience is not mature. Finally, understanding your own sphere of control is necessary to identify and respect the spheres of control of others. Maturity respects the autonomy of others.

One area within your sphere of control that is extremely important to have a handle on is, surprise, yourself. You don’t have much control over the feelings that you have, and as I said earlier, it’s not good to try. Every emotion we feel has validity. What we can and should control is how we deal with those emotions. How you act in response to certain emotions is strongly tied in to maturity.

A lot of this comes from experience.

Anybody will have a more difficult time acting properly in response to an emotion if they aren’t very familiar with or comfortable with that emotion (this is also why identifying your own emotions is so important; I’ve struggled first-hand with this lesson).

We sort of gravitate towards one extreme, crash, and gravitate towards the other extreme, making mistakes along the way. That’s a typical way of discovering balance. Experience itself does no good, however. The ability to extract wisdom from experience is the mechanism by which we become more mature.

So what are your thoughts? Do you disagree with any of the ideas that I've suggested? What important elements of maturity do you feel that I've overlooked?