What comes into your mind when you heard or read the word “Maturity”? Do you possess this kind of characteristic? Are you mature enough? If yes, how mature are you? These are quite few of the many questions that we might ask in the matter of maturity. For this word could mean many things. One of which is that it covers one's overall development of different aspects of personality and capacity as an individual. Through the years, we commonly perceived that the older we get, the more mature we become or it's a must. Well, sometimes this is true but oftentimes this is a common misconception. In what way? Come to think of it. For instance, you meet a 40-year-old man who still acts like he's 16; an adult in age but young at heart. Conversely, you meet a teenager who acts more than his age; a teenager with an old soul. Pretty weird right? However, we can indicate that the maturity of the two different person you've met is more likely to be a delayed and an advanced one. This just appears that maturity may or may not hit a person regardless of his/her age and time can't tell either when. Distinguishing mature ones from a diverse group people is quite difficult. It's not an easy task because we can't judge a book by its cover as per say. But, I think we can all agree to the fact that those people whom we feel to have a high level of maturity seemed to possess a breadth of life experience in dealing things with responsibility and acceptance. “Experience is the best teacher”, right? Thus, no doubt that we all have the opportunity to become more mature with more life experiences that we can obtain along the way. Still, are these opportunities can really help us to become more mature? Yes! If we were to turn them into reality by obtaining each experience along with the reflection. As we may know, reflection occurs when we tend to pause for a while and do some realizations in life and put our thoughts into careful considerations pertaining to this and that. Simply because the experience alone doesn't produces maturity. As a matter of fact, some people are still relatively immature even though they have already obtained several years of life experience; gaining different levels of educational recognition, working many jobs, dating different people, traveling the world, trying new things, and many others. How come they are? It's because they may lack reflection in obtaining those life experiences, making it significantly useless without practicing reflection simultaneously. In line with that is the saying that says, “maturity is not when we start speaking big things. It is when we start understanding small things”. I do agree to that citation because being mature means you appreciate and understand both big and small things, and if you don't understand the latter how much more the former, right? Maturity comes when one has a wider perspective in life and sees things in a larger picture. It is optimistic that it finds opportunity in every difficulty and humble enough to admit that he/she commends fault and say, “I'm sorry”. Mature and grown-up people find pleasure in waiting and believers of delayed gratification. They don't rush things out and wait for the right moment instead. Another amazing thing about maturity is that if you possesses it, you hold the trait of calmness with strength. You concede defeat, face frustrations, and accept criticisms, unpleasantness without complaining. You are tranquil enough to control your emotions and wrath within yourself. Instead, you understand first the situation, put yourself in the shoes of others and be consistently grateful. Likewise, you know how to act childish and an adult when situation force you to. Mentioned above are just few of the many characteristics of people who possess the marks of maturity. How about you? If you are to assess yourself, are you one of those mature people? Or just like me and many others out there, are you the kind of person whose level of maturity changes depending on who you are with? I am immature, so are you. We are all immature in nature, until we learn how to neglect it and embrace change in our lives. However, along of searching it, we may not always forget the essence of knowing, understanding, appreciating, respecting and loving ourselves first better more than anybody else. Lastly, embracing maturity and living life in peace with the things that we cannot change, the courage to change the things that should be changed, win or lose, the wisdom to speak words with humility, the dare to make a difference and just being ourselves are definitely the best options that we could start with or continue to. For again, maturity does not matter in the age that we carry. It's indeed a choice, the sensitivity, the manners, how we react and accept things in life. As what Mr. Edwin Louis Cole says, “Maturity comes not with age but with the acceptance of responsibility. You are only young once but immaturity can last a lifetime”.