Maturity and Intelligence are not the Same

Maturity and intelligence are not the same thing. It is possible to be intelligent and be very immature.  Many people do not know this. Intelligence is defined as the “ability to learn and apply knowledge and skills.” I have often heard people say that a mature person is good at what they do. When I hear them say this I ask them one question: “can a person learn to how fly a plane but still be immature?”

They will always say yes because we all actually know deep down inside that maturity has nothing to do with skill or intelligence. Learning a new skill, or becoming better at an old one, does not make you more mature.

Maturity and Immaturity

But what is maturity actually about? We can get a bit of an insight into this question when we make a list of things that we think is part of being mature, and a list of the opposite things that we think are part of being immature. Whenever a group of people try to come up with such a list what you get is something like this:

When you look carefully at this list, you should start to see that some words are similar. Someone who is responsible will be trustworthy. Someone who is tolerant will be forgiving. Someone who is humble will be gracious in defeat.

On the opposite, someone who is irresponsible can’t really be trusted. Someone who is intolerant will blame others. Someone who is boastful will be a sore loser.

When we see that these words have things in common, we start to see that our list describing the mature person can be shortened. With this in mind you can start to wonder if there is something that they all have in common, whether there is actually only one thing that really makes the difference between maturity and immaturity.

Maturity and Giving

I believe that the only real difference between the mature person and the immature person is the difference between giving and getting. By giving I mean being happy to put my own agenda aside to give attention to the agenda of another. A mature person is happy to put her agenda aside and is then experienced as responsible, trustworthy, a good listener, gracious in defeat, humble, etc.

An immature person is unable to put their own agenda to one side and because of this they are experienced as irresponsible, untrustworthy, a sore lose, unable to listen, boastful, intolerant, etc. They are too concerned with getting what they think they want/need to be able to rise above that and act on some higher motive.

Listening and Giving

Nothing shows this better than listening. There is a difference between hearing what someone has said and actually listening to what they said. What is the difference?

I can hear someone while still thinking about what I want to have for lunch, or what I want to say back to what I think they are saying. I can only listen to someone when I stop giving attention to those thoughts in my head, and only give attention to what they are trying to tell me. This is simply to say that I have to put my agenda aside to give attention to the agenda of the other. Most people don’t know this, but listening is actually a form of giving because it is about putting aside what I want. It is about putting aside my concerns so you can share your concerns. That is why we say “give me attention” when we see someone is not listening.

Responsibility and Giving

It is not just listening. It is the same story with being responsible. If I say someone is responsible I am saying they can be trusted to put aside what they want in favor of doing what they should be doing. In other words, they will not drop me because they want to do something else right now.

Humility and Giving

If I say someone is humble I am saying that they are not driven by a need to be praised/recognised by others. If I am too concerned about getting praise from others I am experienced as boastful. If I do not concern myself with getting praise but rather giving it, I am experienced as humble.

I could continue with all the things on my list, and anything else you could wish to put on the list. I am certain the difference between maturity and immaturity is just the difference between giving and getting. The more mature a person the more regularly they put their own agenda aside and give attention to what they can give. The more immature a person the more regularly they give attention to what they want to get, i.e. they do not put their agenda aside. This is the only real difference between maturity and immaturity.

So we see that there is no direct link between maturity and intelligence. A very intelligent person can, just like anyone else, be concerned only with satisfying his/her own agenda and because of this can be very immature. We are all born selfish. The challenge of maturing as a human being is about learning how to grow out of that to be of service to others. This challenge is the same for all, intelligent people included.