Mature or old?

Quotes of the Week:

"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?" ~Satchel Paige

“Maturity has more to do with what types of experiences you've had, and what you've learned from them, and less to do with how many birthdays you've celebrated." ~Author unknown

Songs of the Week:

1. Haunted by Taylor Swift

 2. Si on changeait by Marc Dupre

3. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out by The Smiths

Floating through life, if you're lucky enough to be average, you'll become mature in time. You'll eventually realize that the key to life is not how dramatic you can make a miscommunication with your boyfriend, but about how capably you can deal with the problems that the world inevitably hands you. This happens at different points in everyone's life, but for me it happened at the end of my junior year.

One day, I woke up and realized that my problems and trials had eclipsed those of a teenager and were now akin to those of adults. And in that moment, I defined maturity: what it means to be truly helpless as you watch a loved one suffer. How to say goodbye to someone that might not come back. Defining exactly how much a person means to you on paper. Making choices much more consequential than what classes to take or what shoes to wear. Choices that have a somber, elderly tome to them. Gone are the days when it's cool to gossip about the latest celebrity abs. Suddenly, being a grown up, the thing we all despised for years becomes a reality. It's not all fun and games and eating ice cream for dinner and shopping till your card's out of money. It's about choices, problems, challenges, and trials and what you decide to do and how you overcome those things and sort them out. And it's hard.

It's a lot of work. It's a big responsibility, and it still scares me. But I can't let that get in the way of life. Part of being mature means facing all of those problems head on. It means going out and taking the world by storm. That's the real definition of maturity. It doesn't come with age or years of schooling. It just naturally happens. It doesn't end any hope you have of ever enjoying yourself for a carefree afternoon. It just means that at the end of the afternoon, you're strong enough to get back in the saddle and take on the world.

But no pressure. Because you can do it.