Maturity/experience: the beguiling texture of stones subjected to years of furious seas.

Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.

To be mature is, we're told, to move beyond possessiveness. Jealousy is for babies. The mature person knows that no one owns anyone.

Maturity' really means: being very unsurprised by, and calm around, pain and disappointment.

Growth occurs when we discover how to remain authentically ourselves in the presence of potentially threatening things. Maturity is the possession of coping skills: we can take in our stride things that previously would have knocked us off course. We are less fragile, less easily shocked and hence more capable of engaging with situations as they really are