Maturity

When I was young I believed you had to grow up and become, "mature".   I think I initially believed you became mature when you turned eighteen because that was the age when you were seen as an adult.  You could vote then and, at that time, you could also drink alcohol at that age.  

Alcohol, to take a bit of a sidetrack on this post, was something that changed when I was young.   Changed in that the age you were old enough to purchase and drink it was a shifting thing right about the time I was approaching eighteen.   When I started high school eighteen was the age at which you could legally buy wine and beer.   You couldn't purchase hard liquor until you were twenty-one, but since I didn't drink yet, it seemed not very different to me.

As I approached eighteen the age limit moved to nineteen.   Then, in less than a year I believe, it changed to twenty-one for all alcohol.  I had friends who could legally buy beer, then they couldn't, then they turned nineteen and could buy it again for a short period and then they couldn't again as the age limit increased a second time.   I was too young to hit any of the age limit changes, but it was frustrating to some of my friends at the time.

Alcohol aside, I thought you were fully mature by the time you went to college.   In my sophomore year in college, I took a psychology class in which I learned we continued to mature throughout our lives and that eighteen wasn't really that mature as far as most youths go.  It was a bit surprising to me that I probably wouldn't be that mature until years after I was out of college.   I felt mature, living all out on my own in college.  Today, I know how very much I had to go in the way of maturing.

I think though that I still believed there was one way, one path, one final goal when it came to being mature.   I used my mother and father as a guidepost on what it looked like to be mature.   My parents have always been mature as far as I was concerned.   My mother is a lady in the true definition of the word.   I wanted to emulate her, to be like her.  I was like many children in that regard.

It was a long time before I realized there was more than one path to being mature.   And even longer to accept and be comfortable with what I was in that I'm not my mother.  I am like her in many ways, but our generations are different enough that what counts most in my generation isn't necessarily the same thing when it comes to maturity.  

I will never meet the standards of "prim and proper" that I see in my mother, mostly because it's not me, but also because the expectations of what is proper of my generation are different.   I'm not going to explain this well, because it's largely esoteric.   There is less formality, more casualness.   For example, I learned how to set a table, how to write a thank-you note, how to take people's coats when they arrived at your home, formal introductions and what conversation topics and words were and weren't appropriate in polite company.

Some of those things still apply, but not always.   I felt for the longest time that I was somehow less than mature because those things weren't as valued or important with the company I kept both in business and socially.   But the older I get, the more I think it's not as much me as it is a combination of current cultural norms combined with the generation I grew up in.

It took me a long time to realize that I wasn't necessarily less mature simply because many things didn't have the same level of formality that I had grown up thinking was the only way things had to be.   It took me longer still to be not only okay with that but comfortable about it, happy about it even.  

I can fit in socially in almost any setting.   My personality is one that lends itself more to less-formal, more casual, even humorous at times, poking fun at myself.   I don't get the sense that I'm less mature as a result.   Hopefully, I am mature.  I think I am relatively so for my age.   I don't think I'm done maturing, but I'm happy with the path I've taken, even though it's not taken me to where I thought I'd be when I was a child, picturing myself as an adult.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been saying swear words.   He's asked permission to sat them a few times, telling him the words are not allowed out of this house, even if he hears his parents (that'd be me) saying them.   He's hit an age where it's cool in his mind to be able to say them.   Today he said some very bad words to his father and lost a good bit of his allowance as a result.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Today I went to the Girls Run Club with my daughter.   It was with students from her elementary school.   There was only one other child there she knew, but all the students were very nice to her, wanting to be with her even.   She wasn't able to run as fast as they could (in the ninety-five degree weather) but her team supported her even though it caused them to run slower as the teams had to stick together.   I was so touched by all of the students who were more interested in working together as opposed to "winning" or being in first.   Her team leader, Louisa, a fourth-grader, was so mature in leading the four of her team to find a cone hidden around the campus with a piece from the game "Operation" taped under it.   When we got back with the piece, they helped my daughter feel the piece and then feel the board game to see how the pieces fit in.   The next step was selecting someone from the team to put the piece in the board and if you touched the side when you did, your team had to run a penalty lap.   My daughter wanted to do it, and even though they were likely going to have to run an extra lap, they supported her when she said she wanted to try.   When my daughter dropped the piece in without touching the edges everyone cheered and then we decided to do planks and squats to get extra exercise since we didn't have to do the lap around the track.