Have you completed the midlife transition from adulthood to maturity? It's really quite easy to judge: there are two major hallmarks or characteristics that set maturity apart from mere adulthood. We've already said quite a bit about he first hallmark, which involves replacing the 'borrowed' values, goals, aspirations, and expectations of adulthood (inherited from family, peers, teachers, religious and political leaders, the media and culture) with personally-significant core values that are generally independent from outside influences, opinions and judgments. Maturity replaces the phrase 'supposed to' with 'choose to.'
However, this is only the first hallmark of maturity. The second hallmark is almost a corollary of the first, although it doesn't always follow upon it. Once we make the decision to adopt a core value system that resonates with the person who we are (or discern that we are meant to be), we have the option to choose the goals toward which we are going to strive. The hallmark of a mature person who has successfully completed the midlife transition appears as a set of goals that are concerned more with giving back than getting. An adult is someone who has achieved a certain amount of independence and is pursuing goals that foster and promote that independence and personal well-being. The mature person is one whose energies are focused on forwarding the prosperity and well-being of his or her family, community, nation, culture, and humanity as a whole. Midlife transition moves a person from enlightened self-interest to making a lasting contribution to human progress. I don't think that we consider this seriously enough as a sign of the midlife transition.
Sharing with others is one of those fundamental lessons we all learned in kindergarten, according to Robert Fulghum. There's a big difference between letting someone else play with our toys and promoting the well-being of others in all our affairs. So, we don't really 'learn' the lesson of 'sharing' until much later in life, if ever. There are two models that we can use to demonstrate the evolution of our character or personality from selfishness to self-transcendence. One is Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and the other is Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral growth.
As we mount the pyramid of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, each individual should be progressing from the satisfaction of the most basic of our physical needs, through the levels of self-actualization, toward a need for spiritual actualization, or self-transcendence. We can't go beyond (transcend) ourselves merely by making sure that our basic needs are met, nor by mere creativity: by becoming parents, by winning a triathlon, or by being promoted to COO. It requires, instead, that each one of us learn to embrace his or her personal destiny, which means the actualizing (to the greatest degree possible) our personal potential. It also requires that we develop our discernment (the ability to see the potential of those around us) and our responsibility (the capacity to use our potential for the greatest benefit of others).
Achieving the highest level of fulfillment in Maslow's hierarchy of needs (spirituality or self-transcendence) means a sensitivity and willingness to respond to the needs of others. Our level of maturity, then, can be measured by how responsive we are to the needs of the powerless, the disenfranchised, the neglected, the despised, and all those who are, for whatever reason, unable to advocate for themselves. Caring for the helpless is the hallmark not only of the maturity of a person or of a society, but also of its spirituality. Judeo-Christian tradition teaches that how you relate to these people — especially when they behave toward you as an enemy — is an indication of how you relate to your God.
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen (who was the original television evangelist) told the story of an execution held in one of the Nazi death camps during World War II. Several men were to be publicly executed in front of the whole camp by being strangled to death by being hung with piano wire. Among those to be executed was a young boy. As the gathered inmates watched the agonizing death throes of the condemned, one turned to his companion and said bitterly, "Where's your God now?" The other just pointed to the dying boy and replied, "There he is!"
The second model that we can use to understand the evolution of character from self-interest to self-transcendence comes from psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg. He proposed six stages of moral growth, grouped into three levels: the pre-conventional (where values are derived from fulfilling our own needs), the conventional (where values are derived from compliance with familial or social convention), and the post-conventional (where behavior is governed by universally-accepted values independent from self-interest or social norms). Kohlberg commented that he wondered whether the highest stage of moral growth — adherence to universal ethical principles — was actually attainable, because he had never in all his research come a cross anyone who acted consistently at that level. Yet this is precisely the level that distinguishes maturity from adulthood: the end and goal of the midlife transition.
Last week, I was privileged to have as my guest on my internet radio program, Midlife Matters, singer and songwriter Eric Proffitt. As I interviewed Eric, I discovered that his story exemplifies what constitutes the midlife transition toward true maturity. From a very early age, Eric showed musical talent and a passion for singing. He was a self-taught musician who found learning songs such a challenge that he found it easier to write his own music. Like many of us, as he grew into adulthood, he turn aside from his passion and took up a career as an IT professional to support himself and his family. It was only when circumstances forced him and his family to move away from his market that he saw an opportunity to do something more with the music that he so loved.
As a a father of five daughters and an eye-witness to the destruction caused by the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, Eric was moved to write a ballad, "Little Child" in honor of the youngsters who were lost in the devastation of the day care center in that building. The song came to the attention of the United Nations Conference on Human Trafficking, and he was invited to present it in person at the first international conference in Vienna, Austria in January of 2008. Stricken by what he heard and observed at that conference, Eric determined to make it his personal cause. In August of this year, Eric ran 500 miles in heavy chains from the Statue of Liberty in New York City to the grave of the British abolitionist, William Wilberforce, in London. Eric is now dedicating his life and his music to giving a voice to these voiceless slave children of the sex trade, and lending these — the most powerless — the strength of his witness.
Although chronologically a rather young man, Eric shows the hallmarks of a successful midlife transition. Like all of the heroes of our age (or, indeed of any age), Eric displays a practical spiritual maturity and an adherence to universal ethical principles regardless of the cost to himself. How did Eric — a remarkably talented man, but otherwise quite ordinary — make it to the top of Maslow's hierarchy and achieve Kohlberg's highest stage of moral growth? In other words, how did Eric successfully complete the midlife transition to achieve a maturity that replaced self-interest with self-transcendence? He told me his secret in the course of our interview: he prays every day. It's that simple. It's that difficult.
It reminds me of the story told in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures about Naaman, the Syrian general in the army of King Benhadad II. He was diagnosed with leprosy, and went, as a last resort to Elisha, a prophet in Israel. Elisha told him to bathe seven times in the Jordan River. Naaman was about to give up in disgust (and rage) and return to Syria because the cure seemed too simple and easy. His servants reminded him that, to cure his leprosy, he would have done anything Elisha had told him to do no matter how difficult it was. Why would he not do something so simple? He did it, so the story goes, and was cured. How often do we, faced with a similar simple solution, act like Naaman and avoid doing the simple basics only because they seem to be not difficult enough?
The second hallmark of maturity is a life that is committed to the service of others. Directing our midlife transition from the dissatisfaction of a life lived for ourselves to a level of spiritual and ethical maturity and personal fulfillment just by daily prayer and meditation seems way too simple and easy a solution. On the other hand, what have you got to lose?
H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2009 H. Les Brown
Maturity doesn't really mean aged or old. You could be mature even at a very early age. Thanks for sharing an interesting post here. Good luck on everything. Thanks and have a nice and fulfilling day.
Posted by: Jane | September 28, 2009 at 12:09 AM