I’ve been thinking a lot about prestige, and status, and money. And success.

How much I desire all of the above. I read somewhere about how prestige serves to honor good work, instead of being a reward for jumping through certain hard-to-jump-through hoops. That institutions that are considered prestigious are so because of the good work that’s come out of them. And that it would be wrong to chase prestige for itself, because the real substance underlying it is good work.

I’ve been way too focused on external perception. For each big name, I think, yeah, what if I worked there. What if I had that name on my resumé.

I like to think that as I mature I’ll be increasingly less preoccupied with names and titles, and instead being the kind of person that produces good work in whatever environment I’m in. I’ll only care about the quality of work, not the name and title and status and recognition that comes from it.

As I get older, I’ve been realizing the importance of maturity. Something I didn’t really think about as much in the past. I know it sounds a bit naïve, but I suppose I was focused on other things in the past.

What even is maturity, and why does it feel like the most important quality someone could have?