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how to know you still need to grow up
“You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever.”
Germaine Greer
In four and a half decades of marriage, I have been admonished more than a few times to “grow up.” So far, I have remained captain of The Resistance. I refuse to grow up even if I cannot stave off growing old. This I regret more than I celebrate. But still…
1. Imbalance
The toddler toddles, wobbles, and tumps over. Toddlers are like rubber balls. They bounce. They may fall 100 times a day, get up, and keep going, no worse for the wear.
Imbalance leads to…
2. Extremes
The immature run hot or cold. The baby is either screaming bloody murder or laughing and cooing.
See the girl crying her eyes out over the boy who never sees her? Or the boy always going too far, pushing a thing past the threshold of propriety or good judgment? They break up and shred each other on Social Media and then make up and celebrate the love of their entire life (which is barely double digits).
Extremes foster…
3. Hero Worship and Hatred
In this age of everyone knowing something about everything and everything about nothing–especially other people–we see a mad rush to judgment and a sharp division into extreme positions. Those who profit from clickbait and the derision and/or celebration of people and entities light the fire and fan the flame with endless persistence. The algorithm feeds the fevered frenzy and galvanizes the willing and unwitting masses.
The immature mind tends to hero worship or hatred. This results from imbalance and extremes, the hallmarks of the underdeveloped. The immature either glorifies or vilifies people, both public and private figures.
“The immature either glorifies or vilifies people.”
JourneyMan
The immature worship at the altar of one mortal and burn at the stake another.
This is fueled by…
4. Echo Chambers and Mob Mentality
The immature brain does not want to be challenged but is dying to belong. It fixes its feed (social media), finds its people, and digs in. One side burns Chicago, sets up a tent city in Seattle, and celebrates the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate while the other side storms Capitol Hill. Mobs, flash mobs, and counter-movements echo vile accusations and spew bile on their philosophical and theological enemies.
(Raises hand.) Guilty a time or two, for sure.
The solutions are immediate the immature proffer.
5. Short-sightedness
Bandaids do not stop internal bleeding. Silly surface solutions addressing symptoms will not stop the spread of disease. They only make you feel a little better while you die.
The immature is short-sighted and beset with…
6. Impatience
What do we want?
Everything!
When do we want it?
Now!!!
The concept of paying one’s dues is so passé. It is way too old school. That was for the older generation, the one that came from nothing to give us everything, the one that worked from sunup to sundown to have enough for supper.
We got all that figured out and now we have full-on…
7. Entitlement
Why do so many commercials begin with, “You deserve…”?
Where did we get this notion that we deserve comfort, ease, luxury, and happiness?
“Deserve”
to have earned or to be given something because of the way you have behaved or the qualities you have. Cambridge Dictionary
My grandfather was a Baptist minister and a compassionate man. He often helped to meet the basic needs of several aged widows in his church. He took them food. He provided them with transportation to visit their doctors or to attend church. He sometimes mowed their lawns or repaired their vehicles.
I recall, however, a Saturday when my uncle (his only son, and more like my brother) and I were painting a Sunday school classroom. Big Granddad, as I called him, was in the kitchen, cooking lunch. A man in unkempt and smelly clothes came in to ask for money or food. He smelled badly and was disheveled but appeared in fine health. My grandfather told him to grab a paintbrush and help us with the painting while he cooked the man up enough to eat and take some with him.
The man indignantly replied, “I didn’t come here to work. I come here to eat.”
Big Granddad said, “Around here, if you don’t work, you don’t eat.”
The man accused him of unchristian behavior and left hungry.
That was sometime in the mid-seventies, and my first brush with entitlement.
Immaturity deserves without explanation. Maturity serves without expectation.
“Immaturity deserves without explanation. Maturity serves without expectation.”
JourneyMan
It is great to remain young at heart, to have a vibrant spirit and a curious mind. It is terrible to be immature your whole life.
Grow up already. But never stop with the Dad jokes.
