Mature
Maturity
Maturity. What is maturity? When is one mature? How does one measure maturity? These are questions that are too often neglected in today's society. We often talk about maturity with little understanding of what it is. "Jeremy is very mature for his age." "Sarah is so intelligent, but she can be so immature! She needs to grow up." Although this word is common piece of most everybody's vocabulary, little time is given to truly understanding it. You don't learn maturity in a high school class and its deeper meaning is rarely talked about among friends. Unfortunately, this lack of exposure to the concept of maturity results in a lack of understand of how we can improve ourselves as individuals.
First, we must define maturity and distinguish between different types of maturity. Flipping open the nearest dictionary, one finds that maturity is defined as a "full development." Of course, dictionaries aren't written in the kind of philosophical depth that we'd like, so we must ask the questions ourselves. Full development... of what? This leads us to distinguishing between different kinds of development. In what ways, as human beings, do we develop? Or, put another way, in how many different ways do we mature? Although there are many ways in which we mature, I would like to focus on the two types of maturity that are most important in one's personal development: physical maturity and emotional maturity.
The first type of maturity, the physical, is easiest for us to fully understand. It is a scientific kind of maturity that is visible and quantifiable. For example, I am seventeen. While this literally means that since I was born the earth revolved around the sun roughly seventeen times, it more importantly is an approximated measure of physical maturity. By telling you I'm seventeen, you've most like already assumed that I don't have wrinkles on my face and that chances are I'm in relatively good health. We also measure physical maturity by key milestones
Maturity. What is maturity? When is one mature? How does one measure maturity? These are questions that are too often neglected in today's society. We often talk about maturity with little understanding of what it is. "Jeremy is very mature for his age." "Sarah is so intelligent, but she can be so immature! She needs to grow up." Although this word is common piece of most everybody's vocabulary, little time is given to truly understanding it. You don't learn maturity in a high school class and its deeper meaning is rarely talked about among friends. Unfortunately, this lack of exposure to the concept of maturity results in a lack of understand of how we can improve ourselves as individuals.
First, we must define maturity and distinguish between different types of maturity. Flipping open the nearest dictionary, one finds that maturity is defined as a "full development." Of course, dictionaries aren't written in the kind of philosophical depth that we'd like, so we must ask the questions ourselves. Full development... of what? This leads us to distinguishing between different kinds of development. In what ways, as human beings, do we develop? Or, put another way, in how many different ways do we mature? Although there are many ways in which we mature, I would like to focus on the two types of maturity that are most important in one's personal development: physical maturity and emotional maturity.
The first type of maturity, the physical, is easiest for us to fully understand. It is a scientific kind of maturity that is visible and quantifiable. For example, I am seventeen. While this literally means that since I was born the earth revolved around the sun roughly seventeen times, it more importantly is an approximated measure of physical maturity. By telling you I'm seventeen, you've most like already assumed that I don't have wrinkles on my face and that chances are I'm in relatively good health. We also measure physical maturity by key milestones