Vol. 58, No. 12 — December 1977 — On Being a Mature
Person
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The richness or poverty of our
lives depends upon our maturity. Every year, every event,
offers us the opportunity for mature or immature responses.
One sign of growth in maturity is our readiness to learn
what is expected of us under conditions of life that are changing
every day. What was suitable in the world as it was last year
may not do at all in the circumstances of tomorrow.
In the smaller circle of our own personality, too, there
are continuing changes. None of us is altogether and always
either brilliant or stupid. The brightest of us have periods
when we seem feeble-minded, and the dullest of us are sometimes
blessed with sharp wit. Most of us wish to be mature, because
that seems to be the only state in which we can cope with
our problems.
Maturity, in the sense of living a satisfactory life, includes
many things, but it may be summed up as a starting point in
Sir Thomas Elyot's way: to act with moderation and discretion.
A dictionary defines maturity as a state of perfect or complete
development. In banking and commerce, maturity means having
reached the time fixed for payment.
Various authors have laid stress upon separate virtues included
in the maturity of a human being: responsibility, independence,
generosity, co-operativeness, goodwill, integrity, adaptability,
and skill in separating fact and fancy.
Whatever trait is emphasized, the mature person will show
skill in handling the events and tests of life in such a way
as to produce the greatest possible amount of happiness with
the smallest possible amount of stress.
The mature person lives significantly for himself and for
mankind. He rejects the temptation to be always neutral or
safe, to be a mere invalid or a minor in a protected corner.
He is too busy with gratifying work to engage in trifling
things, and too well balanced to pay attention to miracle
workers and jugglers.
That is not a lazy life. The mature person is not passively
receiving but is creatively acting. He has a sense of relative
values and a feeling for consequences. He confronts life with
some boldness.
One principle that marks maturity in any walk of life -
in business, in private life or in national affairs - is this:
the determining element is not so much what happens to a person
but the way he takes it. The responses to life of a mature
person are of good quality and can be counted on.
The contrary state, immaturity, is marked by adult-infantilism,
in which a person has reached maturity of physical development,
but remains an infant in his response to the problems and
obligations of life.
What are mature actions?
The mature person tends not to be clumsy in his association
with other people. He thinks about how the thing he proposes
to do will affect his neighbours' lives. He seeks to give
other people room so that they, too, may mature. He has learned
the important lesson that he who walks in crowds must step
aside, keep his elbows in, step back or sidewise, or even
detour from the straight way, according to what he encounters.
It is all very well to try, once in a while, to think strictly
personal thoughts, but we quickly come to see that we live
in relationships. Family life helps our children to grow from
stage to stage of confidence, skill, responsibility and understanding.
Our homes prepare people for the larger and more exacting
relationships of a world where social and political sense
have not progressed as far as have scientific and technical
skills.
The mature person has graduated from home and school with
some awareness of the requirements of society. He wants to
share in the human enterprise of getting out of the jungle
frame of mind, of building a community wherein he may grow.
He develops from the stage of thinking: "Please help me",
through "I can take care of myself" to "Please let me help
you."
Sharing is a vital part of maturing. Most of the significance
we attain grows out of our contribution to the lives of others.
The person in an executive position, from the president of
a great company down to the foreman of a small gang, puts
his imprint on history through the people under his direction.
He builds their strengths and reduces their limitations. He
gives them opportunities to become their own most mature selves.
This can be, as Stephen Vincent Benét remarked in one
of his essays, the most conspicuous enterprise of the human
being.
Down through the ages, human life has relied upon an instinctive
sense of obligation on the part of those most generously endowed.
This is born of the sternest racial law we know: the perpetuation
of any group demands that all the varied resources within
that group be released to most effective use. It is as the
human race grows into fullest application of this demand of
life that it matures. And a person remains immature, whatever
his age, so long as he thinks of himself as an exception to
the law.
It is not enough, however, to give lip service to such a
belief. The title of a book by Harry and Bonaro Overstreet
(W.W. Norton & Co. Inc., New York) is significant of the meaning
of maturity. It is: The Mind Goes Forth. The mature
person is not living in a room lined with mirrors, but in
a sun room with windows. The person who is completely wrapped
up in himself makes only a small package.
In spite of doubts
Even a mature person may be torn on occasion by indecision
about what he ought to preserve and develop in his life, but
this exercise of wrestling with doubt contributes toward our
expanding maturity. We learn to submit to what we cannot avoid,
to banish desire for the impossible from our minds, and to
seek attainable objects worthy of our thought and effort.
In a mature person the progressive tendency is not easily
diverted from its course by doubt or fear. He lives amid ideas
which never before existed on earth. Not all are good ideas,
but they are all bustling ideas that make rigidity difficult
and unhealthy. We need, sometimes, to yield like the bending
reed beside a river in flood, rather than defy the flood like
an obstinately-clinging tree, and be swept away.
The mature person will allow his fancy to suggest aims and
purposes, but he will bring his reason to bear upon them before
committing himself. He knows that he cannot do what he likes
with anything: he can do only what can be done with it. He
will choose from what is possible what he judges for his interest,
and work toward it with patience and determination, making
allowance for the unexpected and the irrational influences
that may seek to interfere with his plans.
Qualities of thought
Every person is the centre of his own universe, and so he
should seek to know himself as adequately as he can. We may
be influenced by our environment and our upbringing, but it
is in the free margin of our thoughts that our maturity appears.
Out of this margin for initiative we develop our special handling
of situations and desires.
It is important for our maturity that we learn to accept
ourselves as we are, without trying to be what we are not.
We are at a disadvantage if we lack a skill we should like
to have; if we need money we haven't got; if we are less handsome
than our neighbours: but frank recognition of our plight will
save us from feeling humiliated.
The Greek play-writer, Aristophanes, caricatured the philosopher
Socrates in his drama The Clouds, and all Athens roared
with laughter. Socrates went to see the play, and when the
caricature came on the stage he stood up so that the audience
might better enjoy the comic mask that was designed to burlesque
him. In that action he gave an evidence of his maturity.
There are people who keep up their feeling of superiority
by strutting in what they think of as dignity, by being unapproachable,
by being incessantly busy. They take appreciation for granted,
and look upon criticism as an impertinence.
Self-love, we are reminded by Alfred Korzybski in his book
Science and Sanity, is frequently referred to under
the figure of the Greek mythical character Narcissus. He,
seeing his reflection in a pool, became so engrossed in self-adoration
that he rejected the attentions of Venus and was killed.
Such self-centredness is natural in early childhood, but
"serious dangers, and even tragedies, begin when some of the
infantile or narcissistic semantic characteristics are carried
over into the life of the grown-ups."
Thomas Bulfinch goes a sombre step further in The Age
of Fable. He reports that when the shade of Narcissus
was being ferried over the Stygian river it leaned over the
side of the boat to catch a glimpse of itself in the waters.
Far-fetched though such myths may seem, they have practical
value in many areas of life today. Look at the common case
of a young man or a young woman, unable to settle down in
a job or at home, disorganized in mind and act, yet expert
in describing personal mental and emotional symptoms. Such
people have focussed on themselves without relating themselves
to their environment.
While it would be a mistake to be forever examining oneself,
the mature person will take a look, once in a while, to see
how he is measuring up in the context of his life. He will
not shut himself up with his thoughts, but will let the air
currents of the world ventilate his mind.
Out of meditation will come wisdom, a quality associated
with maturity. And what is wisdom? Isn't it largely the ability
to bring together a fact that one has freshly discovered and
a general principle that was deposited long ago in the archives
of our memory? These, facts and principles, are used by the
mature person for thinking, for reaching judgments about the
relative values of things.
You never can be sure of the whole truth of any fact or
situation but you can reach a state of practical certainty
that enables you to make informed choices between courses
of action. That is an indelible mark of maturity: to be able
to make choices that are as wise as our best thought can make
on the basis of facts known to us. Then we are matching ourselves
with life.
Qualities of character
Guiding the decisions and choices of a mature person is
a philosophy of life, a sense of what he wants to be.
There are certain basic values and virtues that need to
be preserved at all costs: for example the feeling that life
has a purpose and the belief that there is something in one's
judgments of justice and truth which is in harmony with the
nature of the universe.
The mature person need not be a confirmed conformist. He
may be a rugged individualist, but he will be as rugged in
his adherence to basic principles as he is in self-reliance.
He will recognize, but he will not be afraid of, the fact
that there are three great questions in life which he must
answer over and over again: is it right or wrong? is it true
or false? is it beautiful or ugly?
In answering these questions a man will find principles
of far more value to him than a library of books, or a den
decorated with diplomas. The principles contribute to his
maturity by enlarging his thinking, by helping him to avoid
confusion, by rescuing him from prolonged debate. They give
him a base for decision and action. They are like the north
star, the compass and the lighthouse to a sailor; they keep
him on his course despite winds and current and weather.
Some people confuse principles with rules. A principle is
something inside one; a rule is an outward restriction. To
obey a principle you have to use your mental and moral powers;
to obey a rule you have only to do what the rule says. Dr.
Frank Crane pointed the difference neatly: "A rule supports
us by the arm-pits over life's mountain passes; a principle
makes us sure-footed."
Sense of responsibility
This introduces the thought of responsibility. The man of
mature character is a man who can be relied upon. His qualities
are predictable. He is a good security risk for himself, his
family, his employer and his neighbours.
The mature man does not transfer the blame for personal
misfortune to anyone else - his parents, his employers, his
circumstances. To refuse to risk taking responsibility where
failure is possible is a childish course. To pass on responsibility
for what we do to someone else is to bring shame upon our
human dignity. If we are to learn to be mature we must accept
the willingness to fail as well as the ability to succeed;
to accept the consequences of what we do both in the chores
of life and in our search for better things.
Self-deception cannot be tolerated in maturity. We smile
pityingly at the conceits of Don Quixote, who was able to
deceive himself that the windmills were giants, but in our
own age, we see men who will not look at things as they are,
but as they wish them to be, and are ruined.
Some of us wear masks, to delude ourselves or others. To
use any mask, say H. S. and G. L. Elliott in their counselling
manual Solving Personal Problems (Henry Holt & Co,
Inc.) is to be afraid to attempt success through one's own
abilities. Many an employee tries to act a role which his
employer endures rather than admires. An executive having
a difficult-to-answer letter on his desk may don the self-deceptive
mask of busyness, making it impossible for him to get around
to his correspondence. Anyone may put off decision-making
by the simple device of donning a mask under cover of which
he analyses and re-analyses a problem, postponing the moment
he fears.
Qualities of action
The mind needs to be stored with significant facts we observe
and ascertain. Maturity has its say about the care and zeal
with which we collect this knowledge. The scientist, said
Dr. David H. Fink, himself a neuro-psychiatrist, can spend
a lifetime studying the way of a snake on a rock, but a child
runs around the zoo from cage to cage, looking only at the
surfaces of things. In the same way, many a person, after
returning from a foreign trip, reads books describing the
same localities and wonders why he saw so little where others
saw so much.
When we come to use what has been stored, we use another
element in maturity: self-control. We assay the facts and
delay our actions until we decide just how and how well they
will meet the necessities of the situation. Tolstoy wrote:
"There never has been, and cannot be, a good life without
self-control." More recently, Lord Beaverbrook said that a
man "can only keep his judgment intact, his nerves sound and
his mind secure by the process of self-discipline."
Self-control in the mature person means abandonment of the
childlike immaturities shown in anger, hate, cruelty and belligerency.
Blustering and weight-throwing are not signs of maturity.
It is not mature to push a situation to the point where it
can no longer hold, but has to give way under the pressure
we inflict upon it.
Self-control is a factor in self-confidence, one of the
points by which we judge maturity. The backbone of confidence
is one's faith in the validity of one's own judgment.
But a mature person is not unwisely self-sure. He doesn't
underestimate the chances of missing an open goal. He is not
led astray by conceit into an unproved belief in his ability.
You can't get big things done if you give way to any of
the tricks thought up by your subconscious mind or outside
interests to divert you from your purpose. You need action:
the mature person is not content to be a member of a committee
that makes a few appropriate noises and considers its work
done. He wants to do a job as well as the situation demands
and as thoroughly as his principles tell him it should be
done.
Working toward maturity
Education plays its big part in preparing us for maturity,
but education is not a thing to have and to be finished with.
At whatever stage of life we may be, it is wholesome to say:
"I am a student."
Everyone in modern society is confronted with a complex
series of new situations which education in his youth, no
matter how good, could never equip him to meet.
Adult education is not a way of making up for lack of junior
schooling or technical training. It is, rather, trying to
do a notable thing: to recognize adult-hood as a significant
period, and to provide stimulus and training for minds that
have grown beyond the easy judgments of youth.
Adults do not need to accumulate more heaps of knowledge,
but to look for the ideas that control thoughts about conditions.
In the nineteenth century we saw the growth and acceptance
of elementary education; in the first half of this century
we have seen the development of secondary and higher education.
It may be that the latter half of our century will see adult
education come to full stature as a phase of an advancing
and dynamic culture, necessary to our maturity if not to our
survival.
"One of the fatalities of our culture," says H. A. Overstreet
in The Mature Mind (W. W. Norton & Co. Inc., New York)
"has been that it has idealized immaturity. Childhood has
seemed to be the happy time." The truth is that now, for the
first time in their lives, adults possess grown-up eyes. They
can put into effect a wisdom about life that childhood and
youth are unable to possess. This is the time when all the
preparings of earlier years can come to their fruition.
The young may build themselves imaginative castles, but
as part of their maturity they learn to take off their coats,
go into the quarries of life, chisel out the blocks of stone,
and build them with much toil into the castle walls.
Another look at maturity
It is evident from what has gone before that the mature
man is not one who has grown up and settled down in his job
or his home or his community. He is a growing man, becoming
emancipated from the limitation of his present place as new
vistas open up before him.
Only those who have weighed the issues and have decided
to stay where they are can plead out of such a forward-looking
endeavour. Their decision may be quite intelligent if we grant
them their goal of escaping trouble. Because of their lack
of knowledge and wisdom, less will be demanded of them, and
if they commit errors they will not be harshly blamed for
them. If they fail economically, someone - a relative or the
State - will prevent their starving. People with that outlook
would be fools not to be stupid, remarked Dr. Alfred Adler
caustically.
That reminds us that open-mindedness is one mark of a mature
person. No one has the right to call himself mature who cannot
listen to both sides of an argument, and none of us has the
right to be called mature who insists that what is good for
him must be good for, and should be imposed upon everyone
else.
The mature person will show gentleness toward error, based
upon his capacity to admit his own short-comings. He will
try to see another person's good qualities before denouncing
his bad. He will try to understand other people's beliefs
without necessarily sharing or accepting them.
And now, do we wish to face the thought of being mature?
There can be a certain loneliness in maturity. We have to
give up much to which we have become accustomed - some idiosyncrasies,
some peccadilloes, some illogicalities. We may have to give
up trivialities that kept us amused hitherto. We will become
aware early in our effort of a central maxim of maturity:
that every mortal being is under bond to do his best.
A mature life does not mean a placid life. Florence Nightingale
had a desperate time finding herself, and wrote in her diary:
"In my 31st year I see nothing desirable but death." Abraham
Lincoln had a tragic struggle with himself. In 1841, when
he was 32, he said: "I am now the most miserable man living."
Mature living carries in it the capacity to accept illness,
disappointment, and all that is largely beyond our control;
to accept ourselves and others; to keep our balance through
success and failure. It gives us a certain ability to roll
with the punches, to pick up the pieces and start over.
We don't have to become mature all at once. We advance toward
it little by little, always learning toward our development
as persons and as citizens. We seek attainable goals and avoid
groundless hopes and baseless fears.
Through maturity, what was once a pin-point world limited
to our own narrow thoughts assumes size and form, with a past
and a future. Our jobs become means of expressing the acquired
skill of our minds and hands. We find ourselves with a new
expertness in handling life, a new interest in people, and
a new competence to meet exasperating incidents.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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