Maturity

Certain experiences mark the beginning of maturity. An easy thing to say, but to truly understand what it takes to grow up it takes more than just a little bit of asking because, as the phrase as stated above says it is experiences that people grow from.
One very predominant experience that everyone goes through but that most people generally ignore as an experience is the struggle with addiction. Any addiction, from drugs to video games, everyone struggles with an addiction that one grows from when they truly overcome it and control it. But it is more than just that, when someone is presented with an option to do something addictive they grow as well, just not in the way desired by main stream society. I myself have experienced one such of these instances, a few years ago when I lived in a different city. Where I was living at the time many students succumbed to the vices of drugs, alcohol, and crime, and when I was presented with the option to join in the world itself seemed to stand still for only a moment, when I decided what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. When the person standing next to me tried getting me to take a line of cocaine I refused and left. I was shunned for it because but I stood my ground and have grown from it since, truly glad of my decision.
But their is more evidence than just experiences you hear from people you know, history has many examples where people grow through what they experience. One such example would be that of Winston Churchill the British Prime Minister during World War II. Churchill was trying his best to turn the war in the favour of the Allied forces, but during this time Nazi Germany was at its strongest. Churchill went to America in hopes of negotiating the Americans into joining the war instead of just supporting the Allies. When Winston Churchill suffered from failing health, including a heart attack, pneumonia, and being hit by a taxi, Churchill went on after all that to rally the British people. But i was not simply out of sheer determination, it was out the the fact that Churchill knew that he had to unite the people if they were to defeat the Third Reich, something that Churchill was instrumental in doing.
In the end, every person who truly wants to mature needs to have experience, because maturity and experience our perpendicular to each other. Things we all face, and things that are left to the responsibility of a certain few, either way those experiences help to make everyone grow.