Maturity Through Responsibility
The definition of maturity is “a state of being fully developed.”
Perhaps in a biological sense you can mark that place in humans where we can say, “I am now fully developed,” but in every other sense of the word, I don’t know that we ever arrive. Maturity in every other way than a biological sense is an aspiration or ideal, a thing in which we either move towards or away from but never fully arrive.
A critical distinction between biological maturity and emotional or spiritual maturity is how we get there. Biological maturity is generally a function of time. In time, given adequate nutrition, a typical human being will automatically reach biological maturity. In time, the outcome is nearly guaranteed.
Not so with emotional or spiritual maturity. In these areas a human could be given all the time in the world and still remain infantile and childish. I’m sure you have witnessed examples in your own life of people for whom time and age have achieved little in the area of emotional or spiritual maturity. For humans, outside of the biological sense, maturity is far from guaranteed.
True maturity isn’t a function of age or time, but responsibility. Maturity is a byproduct of taking responsibility for your own life – your attitude, your thoughts, your actions, your time, your finances, your relationships, your health, your personal development, etc. – and then taking responsibility for the well-being of others.
If you want to grow in maturity – and for your sake and the sake of the world, I hope you do – start with taking greater responsibility for your life. Stop coasting, goofing off, or blaming others. Own every aspect of your life as it is and begin making it better. Create order out of disorder, discipline out of indifference, and vitality from suffering. As you do, you will mature and you will minimize the suffering in your life and in the world around you.
From there begin taking responsibility for the well-being of those around you. You don’t have to wait for a leadership position like parenting or management to be given to you. The position is irrelevant. The world is full of immature parents and immature managers. Just start taking responsibility for the well-being of those around you. Work for their good. Encourage them. Bless them. Challenge them. Make their life easier and their day brighter because you are in their life. Find out their goals and help them achieve them. Give your loyalty to their highest good. Take greater responsibility for the goals and culture of the groups you are a part of. Taking this path of responsibility will mature you, minimize the suffering in your own life, and bless the world around you. What a gift!
Here is an example in my own life. My wife and I are friends with a former college admissions officer. From what he tells us, the overwhelming majority of students arriving on college campuses are not self-directed, struggle with time management, meeting deadlines, delaying gratification, setting goals and moving towards them, navigating relationships in healthy ways, etc. In other words they are large children. They are immature and haven’t learned to take responsibility for their lives, so they need other people to take responsibility for them. Perhaps this is a harsh description, and I know there are certainly phenomenal exceptions, but it is still a cautionary tale to my wife and I as we work to figure out how to develop our children.
For our children, we want to deliver to their eighteen-year-old selves a healthy, educated, capable, and mature individual. This will hopefully be a wonderful gift to them and to the world around them. What they do with that gift will be up to them.
So this is where we are at now. When our nine year old wakes up – which is a little bit of a process – he eats breakfast, puts his dishes away, brushes his teeth, makes his bed, and gets dressed for the day without us ever saying anything to him about it. He has learned to take that level of responsibility in his life and his six-year-old sister isn’t far behind him. Not a bit of this was accomplished by treating them harshly, and they largely see it as a gift in their lives. And it is.
We are always paying attention to what they are capable of and looking for ways to add to their responsibility to increase their maturity. Recently, we’ve started teaching them to take responsibility for one dinner for the family every other week or so. In doing this they are learning to plan a meal, get the right ingredients, prepare everything, and help clean up. So far it has been a lot of fun for everyone. Later on, planning and making meals will be an easy tool to help them learn about budgeting and managing money. As they continue to mature, we’ll continue to look for ways to increase their responsibility to keep that growth happening.
What could this look like in your life? How could you pursue the blessings of maturity through taking responsibility for your life and the well-being of those around you?
“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is untrustworthy with very little will also be untrustworthy with much” – Jesus, Luke 16:10
See also:
