What is Maturity, and How Can One Cultivate it?
A new answer to an old question
It’s 10:30 am. You wanted to leave by ten to beat the long weekend traffic. Your brother, to whom you generously offered a ride, is sitting on the couch contentedly, unaware that your blood is slowly rising to a boil.
You told him last night you wanted to leave by ten, and he agreed. You reminded him this morning, and he said he would be ready. You swallow your frustration and ask pointedly whether he’s nearly done his breakfast. He tells you to chill out.
You feel like you’re going to explode.
This is one of my more frustrating memories. I’m sure you have your own. What happened next I’m not proud of; I yelled at him and stomped around until he got in the car. We got on the highway just after 11.
As we drove away, pointedly not looking at each other, my rage melted into shame.
Did leaving an hour late really matter? We would still get home eventually.
Did leaving on time matter more than my relationship with my brother? Of course not. He could have been more respectful of my feelings, but that didn’t justify my outburst.
This is just one of many instances where I wished that I had handled myself better. I wished I had acted more maturely.
But what is it to act maturely? How can I cultivate such a trait if I don’t fully understand what it means?
Having scoured the internet on this subject, it seems like there are two main camps. The first believes that maturity is a singular characteristic, meaning something along the lines of responding ‘appropriately’ within an environment or taking full responsibility for oneself and actions.
The second camp views maturity not as its own trait but as a collection of sub traits such as manners, accountability, empathy, etc. By cultivating these sub-traits, you can achieve the state that is maturity.
I didn’t feel that either of these explanations, with their vague parameters, offered a satisfying road map for how I could cultivate maturity within myself.
Over the next few months, I catalogued my bad behaviour. I was passive-aggressive when my girlfriend left the kitchen dirty. I was self-righteous when I talked to my parents about politics. I was overly sensitive when I thought my friends were hanging out without me.
I made a note of each time I behaved poorly and what I wished I’d done instead. What shocked me was how consistently I failed to accurately prioritize what’s important. In 99% of cases, your relationships with people matter more than whatever is annoying you at the moment. This is so obvious, and yet, again and again, I succumbed to my own negative emotions.
So what was going on? Here I think it’s important to distinguish between initial reactions and secondary. Our first reactions, when met with adversity, is driven by our lizard brains. We feel hurt or threatened, and so we lash out. And lashing out feels good; it feels right. But it is not awfully productive.
Our secondary reactions are often much more tempered. When we take some time away from a situation, maybe sleep on it, we can approach it with much greater empathy for the other party. Which might not be as satisfying but generally leads to better outcomes.
Hence I think that maturity is the ability to acknowledge your primary response but act on your secondary.
I don’t think it’s realistic to try to change your primary response altogether. Maybe it’s possible for some of you masters of mindfulness out there. But for me, I think it’s safe to say that I’m likely to continue to have childish instincts.
However, I can get better at taking a breathe, acknowledging that I am having an unhelpful reaction, and remind myself to push through to my second, better response.
It’s not a foolproof strategy. I will continue to make mistakes. But knowing that I am capable of reaching that second reaction motivates me to push towards it, even in situations where I would rather stomp around and yell at my brother.
