Maturity. The final frontier of growth and the penultimate goal of mankind. Many names for it from Enlightenment to Melancholy but overall most people want to be mature. So I will start by explaining what this is not about:
1. It is not about paying bills.
2. It is not about puberty, sex, or anything else related to your physical body aging or developing.
3. It likely does not pertain to you because you're likely not mature.
Okay, so, what is it that this is about? This is about the dark side of maturity, the things you will find are horrible, and the reality of reaching "the next stage". So let's start.
#6: You gain ninja powers (sort of)
Actually what really happens is you gain a power called Empathy. Now we all know that a proper ninja can spot you from 7 miles away without binoculars, hear you breathing from 14 miles away, and smell your fear (which you haven't even realized you're about to feel) from 21 miles away. Empathy is sort of like that for emotions and mental states; you can tell what people are feeling, relate to them in the sense that you can feel what they are feeling, and then actually project a sense of understanding relative to the limited experience of connecting to another human being. As you grow more mature you gain this ability more and more.
This is not to be confused with general social training or instinctual knowledge; for instance it isn't your ability to read a scowl or to see that someone is obviously in distress but instead it is your ability to see through masks, if you will, and smokescreens and the more empathy you have the quicker you can do it and the more accurate your assertions and understandings about others. Most people never get to this point in maturity and that is why most people aren't hateful towards everyone else. So what's the downside?
Yeah. Paranoia.
So what causes that? Well, when you experience empathy it is a powerful thing but you also realize that other people could possibly experience empathy towards you! All those secrets you hide, the fake smiles, the stress you bury, all of it could simply be undone by another person with your level of maturity and insight. What's worse is that you start to, especially when you combine it with social knowledge, become unable to express what you know about other people. You can't just unmask someone and say "Look, I know you have a great job and a perfect family but you're really suicidal and should just get help. Thanks.", even moreso for the general public than your family and friends, so now you're paranoid that the person who is all crazy whether it be self-harm or harming others or on the edge or doing something in the dark is really going to go through with it. It's just waiting and it is a terrible waiting game.
There are advantage to empathy, don't get me wrong, but this is definitely not one of them.
#5: You're no longer exempt
Isn't that card funny? Well, I thought it wasn't. That aside this is how we live our lives when not fully mature; keep in mind that there is a difference between being unable to understand (and therefore properly allocate) blame and being exempt in your own universe. The difference isn't subtle either; when you're exempt the following applies:
When something goes wrong and it is your fault then you are to blame.
When something goes wrong and it is your fault alongside something or someone else then you are not solely to blame.
When something goes wrong but it is beyond your control you are not to blame.
This is the universal exemption we live under because it makes "logical sense" however once you realize the true nature of the world through maturity you drop this and it becomes:
When something goes wrong and you were involved in any way, shape, form, regardless of whether that something is within your direct control or not, it is your fault.
Now what this means is that your choices exist. In the exemptions your choices are a part of something, they are puzzle pieces, but you don't necessarily take responsibility for all of those pieces because why should you bail your friend out of jail who was drinking with you underage when it wasn't you who got caught and you weren't even at the party? That is not your fault (even if it was you who introduced them to alcohol)!
Without exemptions it is your fault. You introduced them. Even if you didn't you encouraged it by drinking with them. Even if you didn't you didn't try to stop them. Note that there are three distinct steps to reducing your place in the scenario altogether. The problem is maturity kicks in before the person goes to jail, not after, so it isn't mature to think "This is my fault" after the person goes to jail, but instead "If I do not act then my inaction is an act and the consequences of my inaction are mine to bear." This is insanely profound but not something most people ever reach, which is a good thing, because the dark side of this (and no, the above isn't the dark side) is:
Self-loathing.
While other people are asking themselves if they did all they could you know immediately you did not. However your conscience is extremely aware (that's the next one by the way) and doesn't require the movie scene where the best friend dies for you to start questioning your value and your pronounced place in the world. This culminates internally until you basically breakdown and either try to isolate yourself so that you can truly alleviate yourself of the responsibility of being a good human using your life for the better of all around you or just because the pressure is too great and the weight is insanely heavy on your "heart" / conscience / "soul".
#4: You aren't asleep
Everyone has heard this saying. Okay, maybe not everyone, but many, so we all like this positivity! But let me ask you something really quickly: Have you ever made lemonade without sugar? Or water? You can't make it out of pure lemon juice, right?
What I am getting at is that you become very aware of reality, of the implicit and the explicit, and really it isn't fun. When life gives you proverbial lemons in the middle of The Dead Sea there's no water, some lemons, and a lot of salt. The reality is that both extremes aside life will only provide the lemon, it will not grow the sugar cane for you to make the lemonade and it will not provide clean water and an adequate stirring stick and refrigeration or even a cup. The lemon is all you get. So what does this mean?
Okay, setting lemons aside on the table here, the reality is you become painfully aware of lose/lose situations. When something bad happens... that's it. There is no silver lining because there is no cloud because there is no proverbial anything but that "F" on your homework, your heart being broken because so and such cheated on you, the booze on your table taking over your life without you knowing it until just now, or your parents hating you for really no reason under your control.
The thing is you don't actually ever magically develop, with maturity, the ability to deal with this. You become pessimistic. You avoid people. You become afraid to express yourself honestly. You may work hard or stop working hard or become strangely linear in ambition where before you wanted to be 20 things but real life showed up and you realized you needed to be 1 thing that made more money than the other 19 things combined. The "F" on your transcript does not stand for anything but "Failure". It doesn't mean you will do better in the future, it doesn't mean you will become wiser, it isn't a symbol of pride, no, it is, without shadow of a doubt, an "F" for failure.
But this is especially hard when you address the extreme cruelties of mankind. Rape and molestation. Murder and negligence. Suicide and self-harm. Drug use and abuse. War and famine. There are so many things in the world that are not ever good. They don't become good. Returning to our table they are lemons but you get nothing else, nothing to squeeze them with, mix them with, mix them in, sweeten them, nothing.
#3: The Bad Minute
Oh thank the heavens, I needed this reminder, it's okay! All is going to be okay! Life goes on! Except ... it doesn't. The more mature you are the more likely you are aware of, and more frequently reminded of, the choices of your life. Now that you own your choices because you are no longer exempt there is a huge difference between how you tell time. Yeah, it really happens. Everything starts moving slower and slower because you become more aware of who you are, where you are, what you are capable of, and unfortunately what you aren't doing. This time however is like a ghost because instead of just passing by it accumulates slowly and surely over your shoulder and much like Karma (real karmic debt, not that pop-culture shit) it actually never goes away so from second one you are building this ghost that continues to haunt you and only get larger all of your life.So what does this mean?
You can have a bad minute. You can even have a bad second. You become so aware of your wastefulness that it really does bother you. People have bad days defined by the events of the day but a bad minute is defined by how you used that minute and even now as I type this I can feel a slight constriction against me because I could be doing other things. That doesn't even mean that those other things are "better" uses of time, just that I could be doing them, and that I am experiencing a real opportunity cost at all times. The ghost just keeps growing too so it isn't a sense of regret (wasted time in the conventional sense, hindsight) as it is a sense of dread (wasting time, the current and now is always the tense) and sheer inability to overcome this reality. To be blunt a bad minute is ten times worse than a bad day because the awareness required to truly grasp wasting a moment is so much higher than it is to retroactively note that the moment's prior were just not in your favor.
#2: You become an individual
Why is this bad? This is great! Everyone wants to be special and an individual and have the right to themselves in totality. That is the best thing in the world. So let's just get to the (lighter) dark side:
This is a picture of true individuality. Before we spoke about empathy and losing your exemption but when you become an individual you are actually responsible for yourself as well. This is a miserable task because as you emerge from your previously immature state you will find that you are but a babe! You are a child! You have no idea what to do with the newfound state and it doesn't swiftly alleviate itself because it is recursive. All over the above repeats into itself looping over and over so the bad minute becomes the worse minute and feeling guilty gets worse as you mature and take note and stock of your responsibilities in life to yourself, others, and the entire universe in all it's grandiose splendor. This is where you stop saying "my vote doesn't count" or "my thoughts don't matter" but also where you start having to admit that your silence is deadly (especially towards yourself) and that you really do have to face your own proverbial demons to progress. You have to deal with the lemons and there is no sugar or anything else. This causes you to become painfully aware of something. Now the darker dark side:
This is a depiction of Democles' sword. If you know the story a court jester stated to a king (won't go into names because it's too fascinating to keep it short) saying that he could rule and his life must be lush and awesome. So he got to sit in the thrown and all the people served him as though he were king but a sword hung by a strand of horse hair was over his head the entire time. He got the picture and realized being king sucked. This is also you when you become an individual. The sword itself is not only your thoughts and feelings but those of others and they are not all about you, not all about the external world, and not all about something eternal beyond you but instead all of this all combined all the time.
You are king (or queen) of yourself. That is an amazing burden. People do not realize what it means to truly be self-sufficient or responsible for their own actions and most go their lives not doing so because it is a terrible, terrifying, horrific, beyond all belief nightmare. Most people can't handle twenty minutes of it let alone an entire lifetime and even the most prolific people in history were not necessarily of this level of maturity no matter how wise they were, how much good they did, or what knowledge they uncovered for all of mankind.
I can say for a fact that even I am not here. I have only come across one person who was here and they were so ... solemn. It wasn't that they were pristine or angelic in any sense of the word either and they weren't awe-inspiring or the like and you didn't feel the need to bow to them but at the same time you knew that they had a command over themselves that really was quite beyond you. It isn't even something I would wish forced on my worst enemy because it is so terribly heavy.
#1: You Lose
This one needs no picture nor a lot words or explanation. It doesn't matter what your background is, how much money you have, your status, your natural ability, none of it. You lose. You will experience loss. And that loss will mold you and then you will lose again because you've lost and that loss has molded you to begin to lose again. This never ends. This is why people have to come to peace with this, have to face them, have to grow to begin with, have to strive, have to compete, all because of the first loss. That loss can be caused by you, but others, by the world and environment but it exists and it burrows so deep that you cannot rip it out no matter what gurus, psychics, coaches or memes you read.
In maturity you become aware of the Loss.
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