Neha Neelwarne

I used to think that becoming mature meant gaining a lot of experience…experience that would translate to skills, which would help us solve more and more problems, until we would be able to solve virtually any issue – personal or professional.

It has recently dawned on me that I no longer believe this.

The idea has softly settled in me that maturing has nothing to do with skills learned and problems solved, but perhaps the exact opposite. We mature by facing situations that stump us, when we rail against their acceptance, fighting tooth and nail to resolve or to change the situation, and finally accepting that there is nothing we can do.

Death, relationships, conflicts…they mature us.

We try and try to use all of our faculties to resolve a conflict, to make death make sense, to make someone who doesn’t love us anymore, love us again and are left with the heartbreak of knowing that there are no clean answers. The only option is to walk away, accepting that the shape of our lives are no longer seamless and smooth but contain wounds, knots, holes.

Maturing is to live with this knowledge after we’re done engaging with the issue, when we are content to just observe the convoluted landscape of our lives. This knowledge then mixes in, like flavoring, into our bones – giving off an aroma when we move, sounding a static distortion when we speak, tough to the touch.