DING!!

I figured it out. I’ve been thinking about my blog and my last entries. I realized that the reason I started a blog was inflict my pain on the world. I'm joking, I really just wanted to have my say, and express my ideas about life as a whole. My last entry was just a heading, but now I understand what I wanted to say, and how to say it. I’m planning to write about accountability, respect, entitlement and other things I consider important virtues to live by. I’ll call my series “It’s not what you know, but how you apply it.” Most people know about the things I’ll write, but based on my observations, they clearly have no clue how to apply it to life. I say the main reason for this is because it’s not the “easy” way. It’s hard to live by a specific guideline, especially when you have to enforce the guideline yourself, that goes back to my blog about self discipline. I realize that many of these topics will overlap, but they should. My focus in this entry is Maturity. What could I know about maturity most would ask? Well after doing some research to confirm my beliefs, more than you would think.

From a young age, I was made to be more mature than my years would have indicated. I was put in situations that I had to act older than my age because my parents (mainly initiated by my mom’s 2nd husband) would take me to functions, and involve me in things that were normally set aside for adults who had manners, and understood proper social behavior. As an 8 year old kid, I wasn’t there yet. This led to a lot of lectures about how to act properly in specific social settings. I remember going to yacht clubs, going boating on Lake Erie on thirty and forty foot boats, going to job sites were men spit, and cussed, and showed pictures of naked women, and I remember being the only kid there. In these situations, it didn’t take long to mature and know when it was acceptable to act in different ways. I still threw fits, and whined, kicked, and cried, but I had some idea of when it was appropriate to act that way (my age), and when I needed to hold things together.

Okay, I get that most little kids have no level of maturity, and that’s not the point of my writing, my point it gaining that maturity over time. I believe my situation was driven by someone who understood what it takes to be successful, and a good and proper person. He probably thought, why not expose a kid to these situations early, that most parents shield there kids from, and then they have experience and know how to act in them as they get older. This is exactly what I think. I saw a playboy magazine, was explained what a strip club was, and the etiquette involved “you can look, but don’t touch”, I was probably 10 years old when first I heard that. It’s not just explicit things that I was exposed to it was everything adult, how to budget money, how to talk to people, how to face fears, how to try new things, how to use logic to figure things out, how to take care of your stuff and most importantly other peoples stuff.

I think I got my BB gun when I was in the 3rd grade. My stepdad told me to get something out of his truck; I believe he asked me to go get his tape measure. I ran out to his truck opened the passenger door look all around the seat and the floor, around the big paper bag, the kind you used to get from every store you shopped at, but no tape measure. I went back inside told him I couldn’t find it. He told me to check again because it may be in the bag, which he told me to bring in. There was no tape measure in the bag. What was in the bag was my new Red Rider BB gun just like the one in the Christmas Story, some targets, and a box of BBs. I brought in the bag and he asked me why I didn’t find the BB gun in the bag the first time, and it was because he had taught me not to bother other people’s things. It’s funny that he just wanted to surprise me, and I blew it because of something that had been instilled in me at a really young age.

I’d say that’s being mature beyond my age, and that’s unique, I’d just like to see people be mature when they are adults, but I noticed there are so many people that aren’t mature, yet their age would define them as adults. I’d say most of it comes down to their parents, and what level of responsibility they put on there children at any age to be accountable for their actions. If your whole life you’re allowed to act like a child, and your parents let it pass, and pretend that it’s normal for you to throw a huge fit, and then snap back to reality with no focus on repercussions or consequences, then you will probably always think that it’s okay to do it. The only question is when you get older and you’re the only one throwing temper tantrums, why doesn’t it click that it’s not right. At some point you have to police yourself. That goes back to self-discipline, and the desire to become a better, or even normal, person and thus fit into society. What makes self-discipline work is maturity.

Maturity in my opinion is when something makes you upset, you know when, where, and how much to explode. Then you use your self-discipline to hold it in, and think it out. When you don’t have maturity or self-discipline you don’t stand a chance when times get tough.

The great Wikipedia defines maturity like this:

Maturity is a psychological term used to indicate that a person responds to the circumstances or environment in an appropriate manner. This response is generally learned rather than instictual. Maturity also encompasses being aware of the correct time and place to behave and knowing when to act in serious or non-serious ways.

First of all, I think it’s great that I wrote what I did, and then found that my definition of maturity is almost clinical. You read that maturity is learned, this goes back to my thoughts about proper parenting. How can you not blame somebody’s upbringing for their psychological maturation? I think you can, but I also think that once you are old enough to reason you should naturally become mature, by merely copying your peer groups.

It’s amazing to me that people will copy so many things from other’s, what they wear, the music they listen to, what they believe, what they like or dislike based on what other people think rather than what they think on their own. All of this just to fit in, or pose, but they won’t follow other’s as in comes to behavior when it really means something, when they are up against it, when things get difficult. This is where true character is shown, and when the most maturity is needed, but none is there to be found.

Wikipedia is right on again when I read this:

Maturity is something of personal character, or how one acts in stressful or difficult situations, because then a person's true ability to react to a situation can be seen. Fake social interactions are often misjudged as many people rely on outward appearance to mask inner strengths/weaknesses so as to present a simpler version of oneself to the world.

I love when I find things that clearly back up my thoughts, and furthermore reinforce that I wasn’t being irrational or not thought out. Amazing, you can fake being mature. You pretend to be worldly, and aware, and put together, but when the shit hit’s the fan it comes out. I see this all the time with people, in all types of social environments.

When my mettle is tested, I’m always talking to myself, and wondering when the appropriate level of stress is there to snap, but as I do that I end up calming myself down, and not ever using firearms to fix my problems. It’s just a matter of control. I personally would rather everyone show some restraint under stress, we not have as much war, certainly less murder, and I probably would not have been flipped the bird when I pulled in front of that girl on my way to the airport a while ago.

There are probably people that would say I’m not mature, I’m in love with a game – football, I love to play video games, and I’m constantly thinking, and saying vulgar things. All of this, which is my outward appearance to people, does not reflect my character under stress, and based on definition, has no bearing on my level of maturity. I’m definitely someone who does well under stress, probably because I like to watch other people fall apart, although it is sometimes disappointing to see people that you thought were put together, fall apart.

Ultimately maturity is something that has no gauge, probably because it’s a have or have not part of someone’s character. Whether you gain it through your desire to have it, or you learn it from growing up in the right environment, you don’t have it until other people think you have it. I’ll pull from Wikipedia again and you can see that what others think is about your maturity is as important as what you think about your maturity:

Psychologist B.W. Roberts explains that in an explicit model of personatlity, one's personality must be viewed from both the perspective of the actor and the perspective of the observer. Therefore, one's maturity is not measured solely on how he views himslef, but by how others view him as well. By this definition, how an individual feels about himself is no more legitimate than how others feel about him, and so it is important that this individual gains a certain level of maturity as he grows older to earn the respect of others.

So ask around.