# Maturity - a Virtue in Short Supply These Days



## DGS49 (Jan 20, 2019)

Maturity, in my view, is the willingness to work or sacrifice for deferred gratification.

A small child will often do something (or refrain from doing something) for a reward that is visible and imminent.  Longer term rewards ("...on Saturday...") won't work.  As they get older and can perceive things on a slightly longer term basis, the delayed rewards might work.

Kids in lower grades in school have to be rewarded immediately for well-done projects, tests, responses in class, and so on.  Even waiting for the next report card is too long to be effective.

Older students can work for good grades, then to graduate from high school with some sort of honors, and to get into a "good school."  College students can be motivated to graduate with a good QPA in order to hope for a grad school or job...

As we enter our working lives, the measure of our *maturity* is the willingness to make sacrifices TODAY for rewards in the future.  Will we settle for a vacation that we can easily afford, or put it on a credit card and pay for it whenever?  Will we save up and buy a car that is efficient and reliable, or will we lease a car that we can't afford, just to satisfy our self-image? Will we put money into the 401k, or maximize our current take-home pay, so that we can live a better, more opulent life RIGHT NOW?

In my own life, this is a lesson that I didn't learn until too late.  When I was young, I was more fixated on my part-time jobs than school, because they provided money for partying and stupid purchases - and my grades reflected those priorities.  I was not ready for college until I got out of the Army, thus wasting several years of my youth on bullshit.

One of the biggest challenges to parents is motivating teens to exert effort and do as well as possible in school, rather than just going through the motions and being content with "gentleman B's" (or worse).  Maybe if they saw their laziness as a manifestation of a lack of maturity, they would see to adopt priorities that would lead to a better future.  Maybe.

But too many adults (their parents) live life for the moment, ignoring the future and hoping for a generous inheritance or or a lottery win to bail them out when the time comes to "pay the piper."  Politicians ignore the future, and accumulate mountains of debt that SOMEONE in the future is going to have to deal with - if not paying it off, at least paying interest on it.

We need more examples of prudent, mature living, to show the Young the right path.


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