I had often been intrigued by the discussions between maturity and responsibility. I was always told that one needs to behave mature and understand the responsibilities as they come. However, I always believed that responsibility precedes maturity. Maturity comes with age, that too not always. Responsibility comes by at any age and that is always.
I strongly believe that if a person understands and disseminates the service that comes with responsibility, maturity would automatically reflect in thoughts, behavior and actions. One can just not fake maturity by taking seriously or by talking about being mature. One needs to be responsible to be able to show that there is maturity.
Many times I have been in arguments / debates on Responsibility v/s Maturity where I always felt that Maturity follows Responsibility and its not that Responsibility follows Maturity.
Just take the case of being responsible to oneself when in a boarding school or college and living out in either a hostel or a PG or independent house either rented or own. At that age we do not have the maturity to deal with many situations, but yes we are responsible to deal with those situations and learn from the way we handle them. We are responsible to take care of ourselves and our health, we are responsible for time management and juggle with our activities to take time our for anything additional that needs to fit in our routine. Certainly some of us behave more mature than age in such situations as they realize the responsibilities better and learn faster, others take time.
There are cases where people are more mature than their age and on the contrary there are people who behave much immature at similar age. But, again that can well be rendered to the learning one got by dispensing the responsibilities entrusted. There are cases where supposedly mature person behave immature in a totally contrasting situation as the person doesn’t know how to deal with such situation and how to act / behave in that situation. In such cases, if the person takes on the responsibility to ensure that the situation is dealt with care and resolution be achieved, maturity is sure to reflect!!!
