Every beautiful part of this world has a specific time at which it reaches its quintessential state. Every fruit has a specific time when it becomes ripe and sweet. Every flower has its own time when it is most fragrant and colourful. Even the sun and moon have their own times when they shine brightest.
When babies are born, they are launched into a perpetual state of growth starting from the very first day. However, they do reach a point of maturity during the course of their life. A rather large part of the various phases of childhood and youth involves training to reach this point of maturity. This brings us to a very important question – what exactly is maturity?
Is maturity the completion of our education or is it successfully gaining employment? Is maturity the process of building a family? Is maturity a physical change or is it an emotional transformation? Many young people are sent on a journey to attain maturity before they have a chance to fully understand what it is. How can one find an item when they scarcely know what it looks like?
Socrates, a Greek philosopher once said that “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” These words have since proven themselves to be full of truth time and again. For instance, even the philosophies and scientific theories that were constructed by ancient philosophers and scientists such as Socrates have almost always been disproven or corrected in some way since they were first proposed. Could you imagine how stunted our world would be if we simply took each other’s theories and words as the indisputable truth? More specifically, could you imagine how much we would have failed to grow if we did not believe that there was anything more to learn about the world other than what we already knew?
We have chosen to understand maturity as a state where we are complete – fully grown. Perhaps, the true meaning of maturity is simply attaining a state where you are most receptive to new growth. Maturity might truly refer to the attitude of being willing to learn from each other, or being ready to replace the things you already know with novel ideas.
When children begin to approach the latter part of their teenage years, they seem to experience a subtle pressure to become extraordinarily mature individuals. They are expected to handle all of their responsibilities perfectly while also maintaining a positive attitude. This is what they are made to believe maturity and adulthood are about. The truth is, even the most mature adults make mistakes and experience moments of doubt or stress. Painting maturity as a state of perfection can become dangerously stressful for young adults and children, because when they inevitably make natural mistakes, they will be broken and demotivated by them.
Being a good human being is truly about being open to growth, change and natural mistakes. Let us encourage our children to attain the achievement of being a good person in the world, rather than pushing them towards a state of maturity whose meaning they have not yet had a chance to discover.
