Samuel Ullm The Measure Of Maturity

Mature. The definition of mature is; one that is fully developed physically; fully-grown. To me, mature means you are able to watch out for yourself and others, you are able to have manners, and you are reliable as well as responsible. Mature doesn’t have an age to it. There are many kids who are very young, for example, six or seven, who are mature. Others don’t mature until they are about thirteen or fourteen. It really just depends on the background of that individual. Maturity all ties into the changes that Scout undergoes in the book To Kill a Mockingbird.

It is important to choose the right friends, good friends can take you wherever you want to go in life, and the wrong friends can be a disastrous decision. A quote from The Pact sums this up nicely, “Friendship can lift you up, strengthen and empower you, or break you down, weaken and defeat you.” (32) This is why it is so important to surround yourself with positive people, and

Here I stand on the brink of adulthood, a daunting place to exist. I peer over the edge and gaze into a chasm, bright but blurry. I am afraid. I am anxious. But I am hopeful. I am hopeful because I know that my past has defined me, but it is my future that will continue to mold me. As my years as a teenager draw to a close, I find myself reflecting on pivotal moments that taught me what it really means to be a good human being.

“It's great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn't need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things,”. Children mature as they grow older. Manifestations of maturity include; overcoming adversities, perseverance, and making decisions that positively impact one’s future.

“Maturity is when your world opens up and you realize that you are not the center of it.’’

I had always been mature for my age; I started kindergarten when I was four and I made up for that age gap by acting a little older. However, the true maturity that I hold now, the maturity people refer to when they say I am “wise beyond [my] years” did not develop in kindergarten, or even in school.

However can one express maturity at all times? Maybe someone’s “best possible outcome” differs from another, who is then more mature? Again, maturity is driven from one’s own connotation. This is why there is such confusion in adolescents and their push to become mature.

    Maturity is not a fickle expression such as happiness or frustration, but rather an inherent quality one gains over time, such as courage or integrity. Before maturity can be expressed, the one who expresses it must have significant confidence in himself, since self-confidence is the root of maturity. Being flexible and formulating one's own opinions or ideas are aspects of maturity, but neither is possible without self-confidence. The greatest aspect of maturity is the ability to make decisions which society does not agree with. Whether or not one follows through with these ideas is not important. What is important is the ability to make the decision. These decisions represent the greatest measure

A person’s age has nothing to do with maturity ; a person’s life is what shows maturity. For example, if a person has had a very

The school year approached its end. Another summer to spend alone by myself. The cycle had been repeating since I was in grade school. Sadness choked me as I returned home and shut my door. Every year, the resolution was the same: I would try to make friends next year; however, every year, I felt myself falling back down into the same trap. By the time high school began, I no longer felt the numb sensation of sadness or the flow of tears as the final day of May became the last day I talked with my “friends.” I no longer expected to make any friends, or, more accurately, I no longer expected to be able to make any friends. The sheer possibility of befriending an individual appeared to me as foreign as speaking in latin. When I walked into school, what should have been a site of chatter, opportunity, and growth appeared to me as a form of imprisonment and torture; however, unbeknownst to me, I did have friends; something of which I did not recognize until years passed by. I grown attached to certain conversations; there were times where I felt the need to initiate a conversation rather than waiting for someone else to make one. It was not until one of my friends told me,”We’re your friends aren’t we?” when I realized I was not longer

True maturity in itself is thinking thoroughly about your actions ahead of time before you do them and of the effect, it could have on yourself and another subject in the upcoming future. According to Ages & Stages, “The stages of an individual are the baby, toddler, preschool, childhood, adolescent and adulthood stage. The baby stage ranges from zero months until the age of one. The toddler stage lasts from two to three years of old. The preschool stage is four to five years old. The stage of childhood is six to ten years old. The stage of adolescence is twelve to eighteen years old. The stage of adulthood is nineteen years old and above.” An adolescent can also be referred to as a teenager. The text Convicted at 14 discusses maturity. This topic comes into play when he references two killings that happened in Florida. One of the killings was committed by a child the age of twelve and the second killing was committed by a young teenager the age of fourteen. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, alludes to maturity. The topic of maturity is implied when a group of children finds themselves stranded on an island after a plane crash. In other words, a common outlook conveyed by these texts is that in each one of the writings, the children are tried or tested as adults. In both of these pieces of literature, children are depicted as irresponsible, despite the fact that children appear to be fully grown, they are currently progressing and still have plenty to learn.

For as long as I can remember I’ve had the same group of friends, but coming into high school I met a lot of new people. I met some of my best friends here and my boyfriend.I’ve reached out to a lot of different people I didn’t really expect to be friends with. I learned that you really can’t judge a book by a cover and that probably sounds cliche, but some of the people I thought I’d never get along with became some of my really good friends.

A common piece of everybody’s vocabulary today is a word used in various contexts with little understanding to comprehend what it really means. “Maturity”, the stream of questions that come to our mind when we begin to ponder on the eight letter word is numerous. The most basic being, “What is maturity? How does one step up on the pedestal of maturity? And how do we measure maturity?” Einstein puts his perspective on maturity in an even more complicated manner, “I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity”, this view point does paint us a picture of maturity, but leads us to a whole new world of mystification.

Then when I was with my friends it completely changed into dirty, mindless jokes and wanting to do things that I would never want my parents to know about. I noticed that no matter who I was around I found it hard to just be myself and the fact that I have been unconsciously doing it all this time made me think of what it would be like if I was just myself or different from what everybody thinks of me. Unfortunately, I never could bring up the courage to be different, so I started to change some of the little things that I did around my friends. I began to lose the interest of my friends and they didn’t invite me to as many things or call me to go hang out. Surprisingly, I was ok with it. Changing the way that I acted with my friends made me realize that they were never really my friends. They just accepted me because I wore cool clothes and talked about the stuff that was important to the group. I know now that they are all just acquaintances that I have had some fun times with.

You don’t realize as a teenager how you begin to mature until something in life impacts you in a way that nothing else has. I know that I have grown physically and more knowledgeable. I am told and I know that I am mature, but it is not a characteristic that I regularly think about until something significant happened in my life. This