How Do You Know You've Grown Up?

I started this blog for me to learn, to practice diligence, to keep at it, to think of ideas to write... and write, write, write. These days I have to focus hard because any tiny little thing can distract me. Pfft. 

Anyway, this idea came to me... when? As usual, I can't remember. Too many things to think about. One more thing to transfer to paper. So I have this opinion about what I think are milestones in lives of people that will say that, "Yay, I have finally, FINALLY, grown up.

1. When you don't complain about anything and everything that's under the sun because you know it's already there (you just can't do anything to change the situation and you knew that because you've tried) and you just have to do the best that you can to make it work;

2. When you know when to let go because there's nothing else that you can do (supposing you've done everything you can possibly do, again, and you've done even the impossible, and still no-can-do);

3. When you chose to eat veggies without a gripe (or maybe some because you are used to griping about green food) because you know it will prolong your life even when you hate it growing up (Ha-ha. Is that right? Of course, this is as opposed to people who eat veggies because it makes them look younger. But that's alright, too.) Actually, this only pertains to making decisions even for the most mundane things like food and sticking to it because you've always known it's the fair thing to do, you were just too immature to do it before;

4. When you finally realize that life is always calling on you to learn, learn, learn and that learning is everything to life. You will finally stop asking why, why, why...;

5. When you finally realize there's no real right or wrong thing to anything because right and wrong is always subjective, but truth is always constant and that's the only reliable way to base your decisions upon. Even when truth turned out to be bad. It's still the starting point. It's still the only way for you to set yourself free.


6. When you've become not a burden to anyone but someone to depend on, a leader, even if only a quiet one following on. 

I also tried to ask other people and tried to read articles from the net and here's what I find.

7. Being able to switch from serious to silly depending on companions (serious with other people and at work but silly and funny when with loved ones). I suppose this pertains to being confident in your skin with about everyone.

8. Oooh, I like this one. A mature person knows to praise others where it's due and not get all the credit for success done by a team. A mature person knows the success of the venture is praise itself for his participation and that is enough for him.

9. Being able to accept the consequences of your actions and not blame anybody else for the failure or worse, wash hands. Ahh... no balls, eh?

10. Being humble and mature enough to know you're not right all the time and saying sorry when you're wrong. Oh... right.

11. You know how to wait because the best things in life are not free. You dedicate time, effort, faith. You believe to achieve. Yay. I know it's not easy but this actually makes a lot of sense, don't it?

12. And last but certainly not the least, for a mature person, being right is not important. You will not sacrifice a relationship for the sake of being right. You will not clobber and kill anyone because you are right. You will not detonate a bomb, take a gun and shoot somebody, or flip the table over because you are right. You don't throw people to the lions or set them on fire alive. If you know you are right, absolutely sure about it, then you don't need to win an argument to prove your point. You already win and nobody else has to affirm that for you.

I realized I have a whole lot to learn still. But maybe I can start by affirming to myself that I am grown up. Then I can start with what I have a work with that. (Conjecture no. 1)  

And well, the truth is, with the death rate getting higher and higher these days, what with pollution and crime and sickness and calamities and stressful, soo stressful days and what-have-we--the list never ends--we should be clamoring to reach the stage when we can be called "mature" at once. Forget about religion, government, race, affiliation, geography, age, sexual orientation, sexual affiliation and another what-have-we. Just think that if there's about ninety percent mature people in the whole world right now, what kind of world would this be? Ninety-percent people to take care of the immature ones. And you're one of the ninety-percent. Think of what that could solve all over.

Hmm. Nice thing to think about. 

Thanks to my friends over at Facebook for the input. God bless! =)