Ki the Chosen One
This is my original character Ki (pronounced "key"), whom I created a year or two ago. For more information on Ki, see my DeviantART website and click on Ki's picture.
(Not that it really needs to be stated, but this character is © me. The concept and idea is wholly my own, don't use without permission, etc. etc.)
-=* Maturity *=-
Written By Request
m&-'tur-&-tE - the quality or state of being mature; especially : full development
m&-'tur - 2 a (1) : having completed natural growth and development : RIPE (2) : having undergone maturation b : having attained a final or desired state <mature wine> c : having achieved a low but stable growth rate <paper is a mature industry>
A long time ago, I knew this tremendously smart kid named John. Now John was fairly normal, as any kid goes, and grew up in a fairly average family. The only difference was that John was exceptionally intelligent (and humble about it). For this reason, John had skipped a grade and was a year younger than the rest of us. For most of us, this wasn't a big deal. No one ever brought it up, no one ever bugged him about it, and generally speaking most people respected him for his intellect. Granted, there was the normal teasing, but honestly, no one is immuned to teasing. John himself, however, was horribly self conscious about the fact that he had skipped a grade. It was something he dwelled upon and mulled over frequently, and I honestly think a part of him always felt he might have been better off if he hadn't skipped that grade.
Why? Well, John felt that although he was intellectually superior to the kids his age, he was emotionally and socially still at the maturity level of the previous grade level. But was this really true?
All people develop at their own pace. Some children amaze us with their maturity as early as elementary school, and yet others still somehow manage to retain the mindset of a grade-schooler all the way through to college. Your emotional, social, and intellectual maturity develops at different rates, so while John was one year younger, it's not implausible that he was actually more mature than some people he had classes with.
Take my character Ki up there, for example. Ki is young. Exceptionally young. And yet she has been given the burden and weight of carrying a lofty title. How can you expect a child to be able to even comprehend the meaning of such a tremendous responsibility? I find that most people underestimate children. Many people just assume kids aren't too bright. They assume they're less cunning, less intelligent, less capable of sharp, intelligent thought than their adult counterparts. I'm going to warn you right now: this is absolutely positively untrue. Granted, this varies from person to person, but there are young people out there who are much smarter than you realize, that are more advanced even than many adults. Ki is one such person. We are all individuals, all different. We all start out from different points, and advance at different speeds through the road of life.
Don't worry so much about your own maturity relative to others. You'll tend to radiate towards social groups of your maturity level naturally. The only thing you need concern yourself with is your own personal growth, because honestly and truly, we never stop maturing. Throughout the course of our whole lives, even well beyond our supposed heralding into "adulthood", we continue to grow and learn, continue to mature, even unto the day we die. Maturity is really only a word to describe how far you've developed socially, emotionally, and intellectually. Realistically, though, you never reach an end point where you stop and say, "Ok, I'm mature enough now." Life is about growth, about learning, about expanding your horizons.
So if someone mocks you and calls you immature, take it as a learning experience. Keep it in mind as something to work on, because we are all immature in our own way. None of us are ever fully developed or completely finished growing. To believe that you are is to live in stagnation, static and unchanging, never growing or learning, advancing, or moving forward. I don't know about you, but that's not a life I want to live.
Have I reached full maturity? No. I've not walked all the roads I want to walk, or explored all the paths that interest me. I haven't learned all there is to learn or heard all the words of wisdom there are to hear. I don't know all there is to know. Everything that I know, all that I have learned, it's all just a small fragment of what's out there, just a tiny little piece. There's so much out there waiting for me, that to believe that I'm done growing, done learning, done maturing, is to have a false arrogance in my own abilities.
) Anyhow, comments welcome, as always.
This one is a lot less obvious though. Good luck guessing. 
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