Maturity

As we get older, we do a lot of growing. This not only comes in the form of the physical growth, but in mental and emotional maturity as well. Maturing is one of the most essential things a person can do in the course of their Lives. Maturity is being able to withstand all of Life’s blows and still have the resilience and strength to keep pushing forward. Life is a learning process. One can never learn too much. While maturity does come with age, it also comes from learning from your mistakes.

But perhaps the biggest part of maturity is being able to take a look in the mirror and being able to self-analyze. I believe that this is one of the hardest things for us as human beings to do. We sometimes are so in Love with ourselves (in a very narcissistic way) that we turn a blind eye to our personal flaws. We never take the time out to see how we can improve our character, attitude, behavior, etc etc. We have fallen in love with the slogans "I’m just being me", "I am who I am", "Do you" etc etc.

While I believe that no human being is perfect (and can never actually be perfect) we still can strive to be the best we can be. Striving for perfection is a goal in and of itself. Just because we are not perfect doesn’t mean that we must accept everything about ourselves. We don’t have to accept all of our flaws. Some of those flaws have bad consequences, while others may make you unlikable as a person (like having a bad attitude, being arrogant, stuck up a hater, etc etc). One of my biggest flaws is that I’m am a very impatient person. Impatience can lead to not always thinking clearly and thoroughly. This is a flaw that I notice and am doing my best to correct.

While loving yourself is important (not in a superficial, narcissistic way, but in a healthy and confident way) at some point we have to be able to step outside of ourselves and examine ourselves critically. We have to judge ourselves. We should never fail to admit when we’re wrong.  This is not easy at all. Like I said earlier, we sometimes have fallen so in love with ourselves that we (consciously or unconsciously) ignore our character flaws. This is a tough process. It requires a lot of understanding of who we are. But we should never run from it.  That is maturity.

I want everyone reading this to take the time out to really do some self-analyzing. Also, take the time out to see how you’ve grown over the past year (or months). Measure your growth and see if you’re still the same person. I think you’ll be surprised by how much you’ve matured. We are a collection of our Life experiences. Learn from them. Use them to measure your growth as a person. This is maturity in it’s puriest form.



*Love God Always*



Donté.