NormsMilfordBlog

“You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.” ― Ogden Nash

It is funny how you meet some people who, though grown up in the sense of age, have somehow never matured; they’ve never really grown up. Sometimes this manifests itself in childish behavior in social situations and sometimes it is much more subtle, with the inability to make mature decisions.

Let’s be honest, many aspects of “growing up” are not much fun, certainly not as much fun as the immature pleasures that one could have as a child.  Accepting responsibilities is probably the biggie. As a youth, one can get away with immature behavior and it is written off by on-lookers as just expected childish behavior; however, the same behavior as an adult may be considered boorish or at least inappropriate. Some may find it cute or innocent, as was the case in the 1988 Movie “Big” with Tom Hanks; but most would just write off someone acting immature as silly or worse.

Because boys and girls appear to mature at vastly different rates the result is girls looking for boys who have grown up a bit (become men); until much later in life when a mature woman may prefer a younger (sometimes much younger) man. Girls may put up with the Peter Pan syndrome in boys, watching them skate boarding or hacky sacking well into high school or beyond, but eventually they want to see the kind of understanding and real commitment that only maturity can bring.

We all were young once and hopefully we can all find a way to get in touch with that inner child who is still in there and just bursting to get out and play again. I’ve written before about not completely letting go of all of the child in us all, but it is also important to be in control and to know when to let that inner child out to play. That is one of the signs of maturity. I think another is knowing that it’s not bad to let the child out every now and then. Life can get pretty boring if you have to stay in mature mode all of the time. In fact, we’ve managed to turn most of our “fun” activities into mature competitive environments. That’s not fun, that’s just more of the same stuff that we do all week.

So, it’s Friday; think of something that you can do with your inner child this weekend. Have a little fun.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2014 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.