AGE VS. MATURITY....

As I revisit 2008 and consider my approaching birthday a couple months from now (Pisces), I’ve realized I’ve come a long way over the X # years I’ve been on this earth. In certain areas of life, I feel like I’ve matured at a quicker rate than a lot of the people around me. On another level, I’ve been described as immature for things like my blatant silliness, strolling when a certain song comes on, and for writing blogs. Yes, one chick had the audacity to tell me that I wrote blogs for attention and that it was extremely immature. Can you believe that? Being the witty machine that I’ve been conditioned to be, I had a list of reasons explaining why she was a girl instead of a woman. There’s a distinct difference. As tempted as I am to share the list, I’ll save that for another day. Sorry folks.

What I really wanted to talk about were the roles of age and maturity from this Black male’s perspective. One thing I’ve learned is that age and maturity are 2 completely different things. I follow 3-4 blogs pretty closely in addition to running my own, and from what people are willing to disclose about themselves it seems like the average person reading and commenting is like 27+. And the older you get, the more experience you get…at least in theory.

So maybe it’s safe to say that the people who read these types of blogs are pretty mature overall? But what about everyone else? We all know the 28-35 year old dude who is still living at home and playing video games and doesn’t really seem too interested in personal development. We also all know the chick with the OD strict parents that dominated her life until she had a ring on her finger. When it comes to relationships and handling the stuff that matters, they can appear to be “a little bit behind.”

As I go to holiday parties, clubs, bars, mixers, and other social functions it just seems like people really are all over the place with where they’re at in their lives. I’ve dated the late 20’s chick who had the college degree and full-time job. I dated the college chick with all sorts of innocence that came from a really good upbringing. Both of which brought me joy in all sorts of ways, but ultimately didn’t work out for a variety of pitfalls that I failed to notice at the time.

What I once thought was mature and the way to go became the type of sh*t that made me wanna transform into the Black Incredible Hulk. Point here is that age isn’t the end all be all of what maturity is and supposed to be. As we’ve said time and time again…experience, experience, experience. As we get closer to those scary relationships that will become husbands and wives, we need people with a shared sense of experience who understand us and we can understand them.

My question to the faithful and generous readers is multi-layered. What are your thoughts on age of potential significant others and how do you go about handling those who seem real mature but then drop an age on you that isn’t what you expected? And perhaps more importantly, how do you define maturity? We all grown in our own ways. Let’s get it crackin!