Thursday, June 09, 2005

I’m mature!!! (But when the ' blinks…?!)

She spat over the telephone.
“U r immature”.
And tried furiously to substantiate her views by giving examples.
The incident re-ignited some of those long forgotten thoughts in me.
Another spark to my idle brain.

Some Old thoughts.
Time when the film Kaho Na Pyar Hain was running in theatres.
On hearing the story (I never saw the movie), I was wondering, whether the hero and heroine would have fallen into love if they hadn’t spend time together in that lonely island. This is the same stuff, which I had come across in some of those English “classics” which my sister used to read. Aggression giving way for Attraction, Lust and ultimately Love. I can tell you with cent percent surety that they never would have become lovers if they hadn’t spend those rainy stormy nights together in the island or say, if both were living there normal life in the city. But why?? What made the difference when they were in the lonely island??? Weren’t they mature enough to think of a way so they both can escape the situation, instead of falling in love??
I thought and this is what I came up with.

Character
An invisible blanket, which we wear over our true self.
Afraid of the consequences of breaking the rules imposed on us by the social, traditional and cultural aspects of life, we hide the animal inside us from others, by wearing this blanket. It’s so tightly integrated to us (just like the armor of Karna) that for others the only U visible is the U covered in the blanket. This is your personality, this is your character and this is U as the world sees, a fake U, for the society, for your loved ones, for yourself. The blanket exists only when u r inside the system, and once u r out, U can chose to have it or not. And this is precisely what happened with our hero and heroine. Once trapped in the isolated island, without hope for any escape, the blanket was dropped. Then attraction, lust, love….

Maturity.
Relates to ones reactions to those different stimuli from the society.
The society expects an individual to behave in a certain way under certain situations. If he behaves as per the society’s expectations, he is mature. Else he is not. This is subjective to place, time and age differences. A person behaving maturely in some situations may behave immaturely in some other situations. The case is highly fluctuating and there is nothing like absolute maturity or absolute immaturity. Suffice to say, “it depends”.


Now let me conclude.
What is character??
A blanket!! Fake!!But makes the society a nice place to live in.
Whats maturity??
The society’s tag to a person after evaluating his behavior under different situations.
Does maturity have a clear definition?
No!!! It fluctuates.
How is character and maturity related??
Flaws in character leads to immature behaviors in a matured person.

Signed Sreeram R.Warrier (Don’t kill me ;)