What is your level of immaturity?

The other day, I was reminded of an event from my childhood. For several years in a row Mr. Patterson was my Training Union teach (training union is an old Baptist thing, probably doesn't exist any more). Mr. Patterson tried to teach a group of boys age 10 or so a little bit about the Bible and how it fits into life.

The problem was that this group of boys was a little rambunctious. And no one wanted to take over. So each year as we got older, Mr. Patterson moved up with us. He was probably the only one who could manage us.

At the end of each year, Mr. Patterson held a party at his house. He had a pool in the back yard and we'd swim, eat burgers and do what boys do - make a lot of noise. Mr. Patterson filmed all of this on his trusty 8mm home camera (with no sound). Of course, this film had to be developed (no VCR's back then), so we couldn't watch it immediately, but we could watch the film from the previous year.

My single recollection of these films is remembering how silly (immature) we seemed the year before. "Man," we thought, "look at the ridiculous things we did last year." Of course we still did those things and the next year was exactly the same.

I recalled all of this when I heard a young adult talking about how immature a teenager seemed. "Man," they thought, "look at the ridiculous things they do. We used to do that." Pretty much the same attitude I had back when I was a kid.

As they said this, I thought how immature this young adult was and how they had so much to learn. Then it occurred to me, how immature am I now? My mother probably realizes that in 20 or 30 more years, I'm going to understand so much more about life.

I'm not sure any of us can see our own immaturity. I've decided that I'm going to (try to) stop pointing out this in others, they'll grown into their situation and in a few years think "Man, look at the ridiculous things we did last year."

Maturity (updated)

What is maturity? That question has entered my mind a lot the last few days (I'm telling on my self for not acting mature). A quick Google search turned up many definitions that looked like this "The date on which a bond or other obligation is due to be repaid.'

But I'm talking about maturity in a person. Dave Ramsey says "Being willing to delay pleasure for a greater result is a sign of maturity"

I think there's another side to this. I think maturity is basically self-discipline. Dave is correct, but it applies to many other things. Being able to decide that (sometimes) it's more important to work, to study or whatever is a sign of maturity. Paying bills on time, instead of delaying (or abandoning) them is a sign of maturity. These closely related to Dave's idea and I'm sure he'd agree with them.

What about keeping secrets? That's a sign of maturity too. Sitting in a group, knowing something that the others would DIE to hear, and keeping your mouth shut, that's maturity. Sometimes, it's better to keep from telling the story.

Another sign of maturity is admitting your mistakes. Too often we make mistakes and then say "well, I meant to do that" or "I still think it was the right thing to do". Maturity means learning from our mistakes (I make so many, I have lots of learning opportunities) and facing them.

And a final sign of maturity is cleaning up after your mistakes. You break a glass, you clean up the shards and you pay for the glass. You give someone bad information, you go back to them and set the record straight. As a waitress, if you take an order and forget to put it in, you would face the people, explain the problem, and then finding a way to do something extra (I like free desserts)

Maturity - that's my focus this week.

*** Update

One more thought on maturity - that's when you realize that you're not the center of the universe. My 18 month old grandson has learned the word "mine". When he gets to the stage where he can learn to share, he's reached a point of maturity. But the same "mine" mentality affects a lot of people over the age of 2. The teenager who doesn't think about his actions, or what impact they have on those around him and the young adult who sets a schedule two days in advance and expects you to adapt to it both show signs of immaturity. Only when you begin to realize that you are a small part in a big world, that others have emotions and things called schedules do you begin to experience maturity