I read King, Warrior, Magician, Lover and The King Within to support my contemplation on maturity and what does that actually means. It’s clear that not all old people are Mature, or all the mature people are old.
Maturity has to do with a quite a different thing than age. It’s more about how do you respond to outside stimuli. Jari Sarasvuo put it very well: “maturity is impulse control.” He further adds that it is either that you cannot be and express yourself or you cannot control your impulses.
Mature response to outside stimuli is to create a win out of everything that happens to you. It’s not only that ability to see and create it, however it’s ability to see the bright side in everything.
World is providing abundant possibilities for us to build the character we want to be, it is up to us to start shaping ourselves through responding more maturely through action and effort.
Observe your emotions and tell me what do you see? Do you see fear, insecure or perhaps it is anger or lust? Whatever emotions you have, does not mean you are those emotions.
We all are incomplete and immature to a degree. Yet the fact that we feel something, doesn’t mean we are something. What we feel we are not. We may still choose how do we act on these feelings.
I.e. I may feel jealous, however once I recognize that it is up to me what to do with this feeling and the energy. Do I put it to work on my own virtue or do I waste it on useless things to feel better or to put it in effort of resentment of others, which does not lead to anyone’s goodness.
Emotions are energy to be used for fuel of our virtue. Mature response is to sublimate whatever you may feel, into something greater for the good of others. If you can keep doing this, you will live the virtuous true and nothing in the world can stop you from enjoying and living a happy life. You are in fact building one for yourself through responding and shaping what the world throws at you.
Whatever the world throws at you, make something good out of it! Take everything as a gift, add you thing to it and give it further
Examples for such Mature Response and action would be in my case writing, meditation, exercise, work or connecting with loved ones. You will always find ways to channel the setbacks into a virtuous action and if you keep at this long enough, you good things will follow to your life.
Have a great evening!
Janne
