Individually, while the easy path of remaining childlike may seem desirable, the more challenging journey to personal maturity ultimately carries the greatest rewards. An immature approach to life may seem to promise the most freedom, but it invariably restricts our autonomy, as we end up the slaves of our emotions, circumstances, and minds, rather than their masters. Ignorance may sometimes appear to be bliss, but incompetence invariably constricts our choices, closing the number of pathways open to us. Undirected groping may sometimes feel like liberation, but a lack of progress towards an aim ultimately ends in stifling stagnation. Humans are meant to be on a trajectory of continuous, upward growth, and it is thus our destiny, and our joy, to grow to full “stature” in every aspect of who we are.
Utilizes Personal Potential
If an individual possesses certain gifts that remain latent as dormant seeds, then he cannot be said to be fully “grown.” As Overstreet puts it, “to mature, the individual must know what his powers are and must make them competent for life.”
Possesses a Sense of Objective Reality
Our subjective reactions can align to greater or lesser extents with objective reality. The immature worry more than is warranted or take a single positive harbinger as indicative of entirely smooth sailing to come. They turn mountains into molehills, or molehills into mountains. The immature also have difficulty discerning what is and isn’t within their control — either believing they can’t influence things that they can, or thinking they can change what they can’t. The mature see things closer to how they really are, and react, and act accordingly.
Takes an Open Approach to Knowledge
An evergreen openness to new knowledge ensures that a man is able to utilize his full potential, and make better and wiser decisions — to continue to grow.
Recognizes the Value of Quality Over Quantity
When you’re young, more is always better: more candy, more toys, more friends. As you mature, the discovery you often first make regarding the candy holds true for everything else: a boatload of crap can’t hold a candle to a small taste of the good stuff.
Takes the Initiative in Relationships
There are millions upon millions of people who long to have a friend or meet a significant other. But they wait, and wait, and wait . . . for someone else to make the first move. The mature make that first move. They have the ability to take the initiative in their relationships with other people, have, in the Overstreets’ wonderful phrase, a “parental orientation,” which they define as “the capacity to extend a warm, nurturing welcome to what is young and undeveloped in a fellow human being.” The mature support this orientation with a genuine, good-natured interest in other people that ensures their attentiveness to others comes off as authentic, and with a resilience born from the aforementioned sense of objective reality — they don’t mind being the one to reach out, because they know if their overtures are rejected, it’s no big deal.
As a child, your reality is almost entirely created by others; you live in the home, eat the food, wear the clothes, and follow the schedule furnished by your parents. You are a consumer, par excellence. You never completely stop consuming, but as you mature, you move more and more into the other side of things — you become a creator. You create the experiences — a dinner party for friends, your daily routine, the itinerary of your vacation, your hobbies, your kid’s whole universe, your entire life’s trajectory — for others, and yourself(!), to consume. The job of creator requires more effort than that of consumer, and fulfillment in making this shift is predicated on learning to enjoy the unique satisfactions attendant to any creative endeavor: the exultation of freedom, the elation of autonomy, the delight of bringing your vision to life, the joys of turning nothing into something, influencing materials, furnishing memories, and impacting hearts.
Possesses an Internal Locus of Control
An individual with an external locus of control sees life as happening to him; he believes his fate is determined by circumstances and outside forces. He sees himself as a helpless victim, and is often plagued by stress, anxiety, and depression as a result. An individual with an internal locus of control believes he can shape his life through his actions and decisions and that he himself is responsible for his destiny. He is more confident, more likely to seek growth and be a leader, more disciplined, and better able to deal with stress and challenges. What we might call the “Invictus Individual” (“I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul”), does of course face forces that are not, in fact, within his personal control, but he navigates them by working on what is: his own reactions and actions. Instead of asking, “Why is this happening to me?” he asks, “What can I do to make this situation better?” The mature man acts; the immature man is acted upon.
Does Not Need to Put Others Down to Build Himself Up
While the mature man never wholly escapes (the not entirely unhelpful) pull of status sensitivity, his esteem isn’t primarily comparative, but centered to a greater extent on living self-set standards and contributing to the world around him — continually striving to best himself. He sees value through a lens of abundance, so that he doesn’t feel reduced when others are lifted up.
Differentiates Between the Subjective and the Objective
The immature not only react in ways that are disproportionate to the objective reality which triggers them, they also do not realize their reactions are subjective. They confuse idiosyncratic taste for absolute Truth. They think a certain kind of music or humor or design is objectively bad, when it’s simply not their cup of tea; they think a certain political position is objectively right, when it’s really a matter of opinion; they think their way of eating is objectively The One True Diet, when it’s just their personal preference. Never mind that many other people love that which they detest, earnestly hold different positions, or have found real success with alternative approaches.
Maturity transforms ego-absorption into generosity — a desire to give to others. The ability to fulfill this desire is premised on what Overstreet calls “emotional overflow” — a confidence that one has psychological resources to spare. In contrast, the immature live metaphorically from “paycheck to paycheck” — beset by the perennial perception that they are overstressed and overstretched, they feel they only have enough time, emotion, and mental bandwidth to sustain themselves.
The mature man’s open orientation, his lively interest in life, “underwrites his energies that he can afford to give. The person who is bored and discontented, on the other hand, is, we can be sure, a poor receiver: therefore emotionally impoverished; and therefore unable to give — and often, by reason of his boredom, too tired to give.”
Possesses a Sustained Attention Span
The mature man knows you can never build a mighty, beautiful edifice if you always abandon the structure when it’s only one story tall. He knows any worthy endeavor requires sustained effort, long-term investment. Because he’s able to switch from the unsustainable excitement of choosing and conquering, to the durable satisfaction of maintaining and building, that which he starts, he sees through.
Understands the Inextricable Link Between Privileges and Responsibilities
The immature see the desirable things of life — freedom, wealth, romantic intimacy, fulfilling work — as commodities that can be obtained as isolated entities. The mature understand that these privileges are inextricably linked with responsibilities: freedom is “bought” by saving enough and/or minimizing one’s needs enough to reduce one’s labor; wealth is produced through industry; a long-term relationship requires continual investment of time and emotion; fulfilling work is never pervasively such, and is always contingent on the performance of far less sexy drudgery.
Feels Comfortable With Nuance and Paradox
When we’re young, we tend to engage in black and white thinking, and while there is certainly something worthy in this kind of passionate zeal, strict dichotomies rarely reflect realities as they are lived and experienced. Instead, as you mature you come to see that life is rarely linear and instead moves in zigs and zags; that solutions are seldom arrived at in applying the same philosophy and approach to every problem; and that Truth is most often found not only in holding seemingly contradictory energies in tension — cynicism and optimism, sentiment and toughness, conformity and rebellion, discipline and indulgence, faith and doubt — but allowing them to outright collide.
Discerns Between the Important and the Unimportant
The world is so full of annoyances and injustices and sheer stupidity that addressing every violation of morality, fairness, or simple taste would be a full-time job. Maturity, then, requires the wisdom to let things go that really aren’t worth addressing, aren’t worth suffering emotional upset over — to stoically decide that the buzzing about your ears need not affect you. At the same time, it means not ignoring issues that are worth raising, not letting laziness or cowardliness or apathy become an excuse for passivity when something of true significance ought to be engaged, grappled with, spoken up for.
Cares For Something/Someone Outside the Self
The practice of caring for things outside the self — a process in which the arrows of influence and need work both ways — disabuses you of delusional notions of complete autonomy and control (ideals maturity approaches, but can never completely attain, nor would find desirable to attain); it serves as a visceral, humbling reminder of where you remain (wonderfully) dependent. In caring for some person or idea, you come to an understanding of humanity’s interconnectedness, a “sense of how things hang together; not just the thing itself, but the meaning of it.”
Grasps the Relationship Between Cause and Effect
The mature man stays ever aware that every cause has an effect, even if the effect takes weeks, months, or even years to materialize. He realizes that each of the effects from a single cause, beget new causes, that in turn spawn their own infinitely radiating rings of consequences. He knows that the “scientific” laws that govern success in any human endeavor are just as irrevocable as those that govern the physical universe.
Driven by Intrinsic Motivation
You don’t have to give up extrinsic motivation all together; it can remain healthy as a “slim minority” — up to as much as 49% — of your drive. But to avoid being a slave to the opinions of others, overly craving pats on the head, and then selling out in your decisions in order to satiate an all-consuming need to hold onto status, the remaining 51% of your drive should arise from intrinsic motivation — the desire to do things simply because you love to do them, because they align with your inner values, because you get a rise out of forwarding your purpose.
Possesses a Robust Sense of Humor
The mature man can laugh at the tensions that run through life: the fact that he can sometimes be a competent human . . . and sometimes a total fool; that his choices have serious consequences for him . . . and yet he’s only a speck in a galaxy billions of stars wide. He can appreciate that life can be both profound, and profoundly absurd. He can drink in all the deepest meaning of this world and have a good chuckle at its abject meaninglessness.
Finds More in Less
The same thing that the immature experience on one level, the mature can enjoy on several. They deliberately attune themselves to the pleasures of the present moment — small details and subtle feelings often overlooked — and absorb these satisfactions with all their senses. They pay attention to the delicious crispness of the lettuce and the juiciness of the meat as they bite into a burger. They focus on how good it feels to talk with an old friend, or be held by their spouse. They still look for and learn new things about the people they’ve known for years. They stop along an oft-trod path, to examine a flower more closely. They continue to find interesting ways to explore the city they’ve lived in for decades. Because the mature can access multiple layers of every experience and relationship — can suck the marrow out of things the immature ignore or discard — they’re able to keep the familiar perennially fresh, and garner far more joy, from far fewer things.
Lives With a Sense of Vocation
A vocation utilizes what Palmer calls “birthright gifts” — it requires the actualization of one’s aforementioned seeds of potential, and the marshaling and channeling of these seeds towards a cohesive purpose. It rests on the conviction that there are things for you to do, that no one else can do. Fulfilling one’s vocation requires mastering the skills attendant to it. As Overstreet observes, a central aspect to a “true vocation,” is that “it demands intimate knowledge of some kind of working material — some medium that is to be understood and respected, and through which insight and caring can be expressed.” These working materials, these mediums through which one expresses his vocation, concern not only the professional but the relational. Marriage is a vocation; friendship is a vocation; parenthood is a vocation; mentorship is a vocation. In every single dyadic relationship, there is a unique calling to be discovered: Who I am to be to this person? What role am I to play in their life?
Tests Assumptions Directly
Grown-ups often believe they are thinking their own thoughts and making their own choices, when in fact they are parroting lines from the media, buying what’s been sold them, and living out expectations bequeathed from family, friends, and culture. The mature mind tries to approach problems and decisions with as much critical thinking and cognitive freshness as possible. It researches multiple sides/options, gathers evidence, weighs the evidence, formulates a hypothesis, and tests that hypothesis by way of personal experiments that never entirely end. New facts are searched out, changes in circumstances are assessed, and conclusions are continually retested, tweaked, and refined in the laboratory of firsthand experience.
Practices Patience With the Flaws of Others
The same energy that causes someone to be flaky, flighty, moody, or demanding, may also be what respectively makes them creative, adventurous, empathetic, or high-achieving. The mature come to realize that you can’t pick up one end of the stick of a person’s personality, without picking up the other — that what you most dislike about someone is frequently tied to what you most love. One can even come to exercise patience with those flaws in another which aren’t even connected to his or her virtues. As C.S. Lewis writes, the mature come to realize that it’s possible to love someone who’s damaged, since that’s exactly how you love yourself:
Owns up to Mistakes
In the mode of mature personal responsibility there are no apologies with caveats, no “Sorry, but’s . . .” Just the frank ownership of error. Yet there is no room for excess self-flagellation, either. The mature individual recognizes the mistake, confesses it, and offers restitution if possible/necessary. Then, he moves on and tries to be better in the future. He neither ignores his mistakes, nor allows them to push him into a place of demoralizing regret and rumination. He sees them as important learning experiences.
Confronts Life Directly
The Resistance operates not only in the artistic realm, but in every area of life, whether private to-dos, professional tasks, or social dynamics. Call it inertia, or the pull to the path of least resistance, but it’s the almost palpable wall one frequently feels when trying to take a step towards any kind of action. Born of fear, uncertainty, or sheer laziness, the Resistance makes what you want to do — from getting started on your work, to visiting a new gym, to calling to make an appointment, to texting a friend back, to even emotionally involving yourself in a parent’s journey with a terminal disease — seem arduous, unimportant, impossible, or postpone-able. It invents a thousand rationalizations and excuses for why you don’t have to do the thing. The Resistance makes you want to hide under a rock and act like whatever is going on, isn’t. At the same time, the Resistance makes distractions seem like harmless diversions, and far more enticing than that which you really need to engage. The mature man sees the necessity in Pressfield’s call to “wage war” on the Resistance. He pushes through the wall of inertia, excuses, and contrary feelings. He fights back against self-sabotage. He engages the task at hand, enters directly into the arena of difficulties, does the work.
Exercises (Self-)efficacy
The immature content themselves with being able to effectively manipulate the basics needed to perpetuate their daily existence. The mature never lose the satisfaction of finding new ways to use the self to influence the non-self. Throughout their lives, they continue to gain in competence, and the more domains they master, the more confident they feel in trying new things. Efficacy (the ability to make things happen) leads to greater self-efficacy (the belief that one possesses said ability), which in turn increases efficacy, in an endlessly virtuous circle.
Delays Gratification
In a world where the faucet of every commodity — food, entertainment, shopping, media, sex — runs 24/7 on full blast, and one can be constantly satiated, if not completely oversaturated, on every possible pleasure, the mature individual intentionally chooses to abstain from certain things, at certain times; he deliberately cultivates a hunger (physical, psychological, or both), a sense of anticipation, that will ultimately heighten, and in some cases even sacralize, the satisfaction and delights of their consummation. He intentionally creates contrast between empty and full, having and having not, so that his life is not one undeviating, unbroken, benumbing stream of stuffed-full sameness, but rather has texture, seasons, expectancy.
Makes the Most of Things
When plans change, when expectations are thwarted, the immature are unable to recover, to shift their paradigm. They sulk, complain, begrudgingly endure. They can only see the way a situation has unacceptably deviated from their original conception of how it should go. The mature are flexible. They can see opportunities in the new path set by the curveball. They can reframe any situation into something more positive. Obligated to attend a party they’d rather skip? They’ll look at it as a way to practice their social skills for a future event they do care about. Stuck in a boring lecture? They’ll think of it as a time to recalibrate their distracted brain and let it wander without checking their phone. Flight delayed? They’ll see it as a chance to visit a nearby museum. Rather than requiring all of their experiences to be ready-made, and perfectly presented, the mature possess the creativity needed to make their own fun, and the most of whatever life throws at them.
Recognizes the Wisdom of Fundamental Truths
Most of us have had the experience where the wisdom of a timeless aphorism or principle that we heard, and ignored, as a child is suddenly revealed. To the immature, these “ah-ha” moments come more slowly, if at all. They spend their time looking for completely novel answers or pathways, feeling that timeworn truths are too simple and too common to hold much value. Or they acknowledge the existence of such truths, but believe they themselves are exceptions to the rules, and thus fruitlessly seek to circumvent them. The mature recognize fundamental truths, respecting the fact that they, too, are subject to the unchanging laws that structure reality, even as they seek to do something wildly original.
Meets Needs Self-reliantly
Maturing means growing in your capability to meet your own needs, as you become progressively more skilled, competent, and emotionally intelligent. And it means becoming less needy in general. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants and to serve them oneself?” No one ever becomes completely independent of other people, and it would not be desirable to do so. But when you do need help, you ask for it directly. You don’t expect other people to read your mind, and then act put out when they fail to manifest these psychic powers. Many a relationship is sunk by such implicit assumptions: “You should know how I feel without my saying so.” “You should know what I need without my telling you.” Maturing means growing out of an indirect, infantile, dependent way of meeting your needs, and into a direct, mature, independent approach to obtaining what you want.
Realizes Nobody Thinks About Him That Much
The fact that people don’t think about you and what you’re doing nearly as much as you think they do (since, just like you, they’re too busy thinking about themselves) might be a check to the ego. But, it’s also incredibly liberating.
Acts Reliably
The word reliable has its origins in relier, Old French for “fasten” or “attach”; the reliable man is an immovable pillar of strength — someone you can hang your hat on, lean and depend on, trust implicitly. The pointed end of a compass around which everything turns. Being reliable means keeping your promises, managing expectations, following through on obligations, acting consistently, pulling your weight, and showing up. Always showing up.
Handles Freedom Courageously
Stepping out from dependence means stepping into real freedom, and while it may seem strange to think of needing courage to make this journey, as the sociologist Erich Fromm famously noted, humans in fact have a very strong tendency to want to escape from freedom. We like what we’re used to, we like structure, we like being taken care of, even if that means following someone else’s rules. It takes genuine bravery, May notes, simply “to be one’s self”:
Moves Forward On Faith
Part of the kind of black and white thinking that marks the adolescent mind is the desire to possess absolute knowledge before committing to an idea or path. To have all the answers before moving forward or throwing one’s hat in the ring. The mature person has a higher tolerance for mystery and uncertainty; he doesn’t have to have everything figured out in order to take a step into the darkness. This ability to grapple with the unknown, the Overstreets argue, grows out of the mature individual’s substantial, varied experiences with diving deep into life. To begin with, his past experiences with embracing risk have given him a confidence that even if he encounters a situation he’s never handled before, he has a set of broad, dexterous “tools” — skill sets and mindsets — with which to deal with it. Second, his experiences with caring for others leads him to “believe that where his strength leaves off, after he has done the best he can, borrowed strength will be available: that of parent, brother, sister, friend, fellow worker, generous stranger, or inspiring predecessor.” Finally, his experiences with life’s undulating course — its ups and downs — have given him a visceral conviction of the truth found in that old maxim: “This too, shall pass.” His faith in life “grows out of experiences that show loss, pain, weakness, ineptitude, embarrassment, disappointment, and loneliness to be so contained within time — having endings as well as beginnings — that there can be an expectation of living beyond them.” Added all up, these experiences “make the individual’s present both interesting and negotiable — so that he feels the oncoming future as abundant but not overwhelming.” They allow a man to step out in the glow of faith his maturity has already kindled, and toward an even greater light illuminating the yet distant uplands of adulthood.