Switching Focus

I have lived an odd life, and I don’t actually know why. I suspect that I have suffered from attention deficit disorder, but I can’t say for sure because I was never diagnosed with it. However, all that impulsive behavior and job switching is a good indication. It has taken 23 years of introspective journal writing to get where I am now. There is another way to look at it. I failed to mature in the normal time frame. One might call it “retarded maturity.” On the internet, I found that retarded maturity had more to do with fruit than anything else. I kept trying different keywords; the two that worked best were “maturity and responsibility.” After reading many things that many people consider to be true maturity, I arrived at two conclusions. First of all, I matured in mixed fashion; in some ways I was very mature, and in others very immature. Second, I realized that the very subject that I was exploring yesterday, inward and outward focus, has a great deal to do with maturity. You might say that maturity is the ability to focus outside one’s self, but this is not always true. It might be more accurate to say that maturity is the ability to switch focus as appropriate.