The Idea of Emotional Maturity

Let's start by defining maturity. The word means reaching the most advanced stage in the process of evolution. We physically mature after a certain age and that's through individual evolution with the help of time.

Adding in an emotional aspect into this, I believe this type of maturity can be developed purely through experiences and age has minimal contribution to this. A 15 y/o person can be more mature than a 24 y/o one and that is enough evidence for us to rule out the importance of age in the development of emotional maturity.

I was reading the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman and it had an idea that our emotions can sometimes overstep rationality. Above all rationality lies what our heart tells us to do. We're talking about instincts and what we call 'gut feeling'.

"Creative minds don't follow rules, they follow will." - Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words.

We can think about rationale and plan our long-term game but the littlest of details in our life are conquered by emotions in the moment and are not necessarily rational. That is something to think about.

Back to the topic of maturity, it's something that is developed through experiences and it trains our instincts. We make bad decisions that lead to good decisions over time cause we learn from the consequences.

Ritik, you used the words 'over time' but then you said maturity has nothing to do with age. What are you trying to say?

For sure, age is just an indicator and has relatively less contribution to the emotional growth than experiences. It's not an either-or case. Generally, experiences are gained over time.

I mean to imply that the more experiences one has, the more that person is required to make decisions.

Being exposed to situations where you have to make decisions is what leads to understanding of the 'self' and our emotions. The volume of decisions will train a person's instincts about what works and what doesn't.

We all say that we should learn from our mistakes. In most cases, our mistakes will be the result of our decisions and because they turned out to be mistakes, we switch the decisions next time and that leads to internalization of ideas and values you think are right and all of that, in the end, leads to the growth of emotional maturity.

- Ritik Sahni