On Maturity

Lately, I seem to be engaging in debates with dear and near about a topic of no great significance, yet interesting at the same time – Maturity.

It all started when a girl I know remarked "He's soooo mature".

That was it.

What the bloody hell was she talking about? Not that the he in context was of any direct threat to me, nor that he was stealing the attention I demanded from the girl in context, but contextually speaking – how did she find out, or assume, that he, of all the other people surrounding her including me, was mature?

There started the debate on maturity and a flood of brutally honest comments on many of the acts I do that came across to her as "immature". But that's irrelevant here.

What is relevant however, is the reasoning behind the classification of something as MATURE. Scientific that I am, I decided to start the search by aggregating the facts that the self proclaimed more intelligent people might have to say. I decided to begin my search from dictionary.com . I was convinced beyond reasonable doubt that their explanations – "having reached full natural growth or development" and "ripe" were not the meanings she was talking about. The only reasonable explanation I found was "having reached maturation" – which puts us back in the recursive and non-conclusive search for the meaning of "mature".

To give the premise its deserved due diligence, I went on to search wikipedia with the keyword mature - and the topic was all about sexual maturity. I did not wish to think through the derivations of her comment that he was sooo mature in this context. But it all comes to this – all definitions of mature had the root "matur" (eg: mature = showing maturity) in them – thereby proving that the explanations were all "beating around the bush" with no clear segmented explanation as to what this big word meant.

Hence started my search of observing people, their body language (thanks to Allan and Barbara) and the context – each and everytime the word MATURE popped up. My observations, though crude and unscientific at times proved certain basics of the usage of the word.

1) No one has any idea what "mature" means.
2) Pessimistic, sad and uninteresting people with no interest in playing with the electronics at your host's house might come across as "mature" – but the curious engineering minds who wish to find out the function of every button on their 46" plasma display might come across as immature.
3) If you are a girl, and ur jaw drops at the sight of this particular man, he will come across as being mature to you – "maturity" is too big a usage for this phenomena.
4) If you admire someone – you will consider him more mature than you.
5) If you dislike someone – you will consider him less mature than you.
6) Maturity – is a term used by you to see where you stand in your own scale of self respect. Dissing someone in this game makes u feel good, supporting someone and terming them mature shows your desire to network with him.

That's all there is. The word means nothing in everyday conversations – proven by the fact that the people who use the word have no idea what it means. It's all relative and has no value but small talk.