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“You’re so immature”

ImmatureAll my life people have told me how I am “immature.” From middle school, all the way through adulthood. I am now 37 and I still hear it on occasion. It makes me wonder what people’s definition of maturity is. According to Webster immature means “Not fully developed or grown.” and “Acting in a childish way: having or showing lack of emotional maturity.”

I believe I fit the profile of a mature adult. I have held a full-time job for my entire adult  life, and have gained much respect professionally. I own my own home. I am a husband and a father, and have done well in these roles. I maintain healthy adult relationships with family and friends.

I have noticed that people only say this to me (and others) when I (we) say something that can be considered shocking, funny, and inappropriate (by whatever ridiculous standard of appropriateness the behavior is being measured against). While this behavior is not always desired, interestingly it does not quite fall into the definition of “immature.”

There are many out there like me. People who speak their minds. People who will make absurd, and ridiculous gestures for a laugh. People who involve themselves in games and activities that serve no other purpose than mental exercise and entertainment.  People who love sci-fi/fantasy, and treat it as its own sub reality. We have been called nerds, geeks, dweebs, rejects, spazzes, and dorks. I am perfectly fine with all these names. I am not fine however with being called “immature.” Personally I just think we should be called “fun”, because that’s exactly what we are. Perhaps that’s the meaning that normal people are giving to the word “immature.” Immature = fun. It all makes sense now. Particularly since the people who use the phrase “You’re so immature” obviously consider themselves very mature. And they are right, they are mature. They are very … very … boring.

As we grow into adulthood, we learn how to live and adapt to survive. But that is not the same thing as what they would have you believe “maturing” is. It is my opinion that maturity is just another fictitious concept people have created to draw a line in the sand regarding conformity.

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Let Life Happen

Traffic2There are 24 hours in a day. This may seem like a lot, but when we consider that 7-8 hours of that time is spent sleeping and 8 hours spent working, we are down to only a third left of our day to take care of everything else, like upkeep, our passions, and god forbid …. recreation. Often times there is not enough time and/or energy after work to handle all the upkeep, so we put off the upkeep to the weekend when we have plenty of time. Ah, but then that kinda makes the weekend a chore too, does it not. Now I could go on a rant about how a minimalist lifestyle can save us the tremendous amount of upkeep, thereby saving us a lot of time. But that is not what this essay is all about. THIS essay is about our obsessive need to follow a plan.

With all the necessary daily/weekly activities taking up so much of our time, it has become necessary for us to plan/schedule our recreational time and passions just to fit them in. Now there is nothing inherently wrong with that, but this has led to our obsession with trying to fill every blank space in our hourly calendar out of fear that we might fall behind in these activities and/or passions. Again, there is nothing wrong with planning out our activities; after all, a minimalist’s life is one of intention, and intention is usually planned and scheduled.

The problem with this is that when a persons schedule is so tightly packed with all the things they want to do, it cuts them off from growing wider mentally at the expense of growing deeper. That is, when someone packs their time to the brim with all the activities they need to do to pursue their passions, they are so focused on these pursuits that they don’t leave them-self open to consider other possibilities, other growth opportunities; potentially other passions. We become so narrowly focused on our goals, that any disruption that derails us from the path we have set for ourselves makes us furious. In our fury, we often close ourselves off from what the disruption is trying to teach us so that we can regain focus and get back on the track toward our destination. What we don’t realize, is that is potentially missed opportunity.

How do we fight this human tendency? simple. Don’t pack our schedules to tightly; allow plenty of buffer time for incidentals, because they can and will happen. Furthermore, don’t be so narrowly focused on these activities that we close our minds to other activities, other possibilities. I happen to believe that most of the time “incidentals” happen, they’re not incidental at all. They are in fact lessons and/or opportunities presenting themselves that we should be paying attention to. They are in fact, REAL LIFE unfolding right before us. If we fight it or try to avoid it, we are only robbing ourselves. Let life happen, and embrace it. Our current passions will still be there waiting for us when the lesson is over.

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Shake things up

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I have said countless times before that life is all about relationships and experiences. It is obvious that we cannot have many life experiences unless we are consistently having new experiences. It then follows that we cannot have new experiences unless we break the constant repetition of old experiences. In other words: We have got to break from our daily pattern of life often, and try new things (shake things up).

In my opinion, the biggest appeal to living a minimalist lifestyle has always been having the freedom to go to new places, and try new things. The truth is, new experiences are absolutely necessary to grow as people. One cannot acquire true wisdom with their nose in a book all the time, or even surfing the web constantly. Wisdom can only be gained from real world experience (which includes those things too) from a variety of sources, most of which require social interaction (which brings us to relationships).

Need more motivation? Consider this:

Think of your absolute favorite dish. The absolute most delicious thing you have ever tasted. Now consider how many dishes you have ever had in your life. NOW consider how many dishes exist in the world. I think we all can acquiesce to the fact that what we have been exposed to is just a mere fraction of the number of dishes that are out there. From that, we can infer that no matter what our favorite dish is, there must be one we would like even better out there in the world. Many in fact. I’ll even go far enough to say that it is likely we will never get to taste the dish that is the absolute best tasting one in our lifetime.

This logic can be applied to anything: favorite movie, favorite song, favorite sport, favorite vacation spot, favorite leisure activity, etc.

Is this not reason enough to grab life by the horns, and experience as much in life as possible.