I find these elements are the key parts to maturity, to growth in this world:
1. You own your feelings, and you no longer blame what you are thinking or feeling on what someone has said or done. Sadly, the victimization culture has become very strong in this country, and now men and women are busy trying to line up their lives according to the thoughts and opinions of others, when in truth people are just as confused because they are living by the dictates of their thoughts and feelings. No one can make you feel mad, bad, sad, or afraid.
2. You know who and whose you are in this world. The desire to identify with something, with anything is crucial to man, more than all the riches of the world, man wants to stand on something, wants to feed his soul something better than the wealth and worth that this world claims to offer.
3. Forgive. Men and women hold on to the hurts and harms of the past precisely because they fear that they must depend on themselves or someone around them to keep them safe. Forgiveness means that we no longer identify ourselves with what others did not us, nor do we identity with what we did to others, or what we feel that we allowed others to do to us!
4. It's not about thinking about ourselves, it's not about thinking about others, it's about resting in something solid and certain in this world, something that no one else can take away from you. When we have learned how to sit, when we have learned how to walk in the bearing of who we are because we have learned how to sit, then we find that we can stand when the times get tough.