Throughout my life, I have been called childish. Those who call me it say it with the intent to insult. When I look around, however, I believe it to be a compliment. I define maturity as comfort with one self, the more comfortable you are in your skin, the more mature you are. As we get older, people stray away from their true nature in order to "conform" to society, friends, parents, significant other etc. etc. rules. You can never convince yourself that you're a different person though; and symptoms both physically and mentally begin to arise. A child doesn't know how to be anyone else. This is why they throw fits in the middle of a restaurant or stores. They do what they want when they want and whoever is watching be damned. I do the same. I refuse to be someone else, I only know how to be me. As I grew older, I never got this duplicitous, lying, pretending to be someone else thing my peers have. I was horrible in school plays because I was unable to act. I even took acting classes but to be someone besides me is just so alien to me. That is the real reason I'm called childish, because I refuse to comform to anyone's rules besides mine.
The other part that makes me believe it is good to be childish, is old people want to be children. Old people complain "Youth is wasted on the young" or "If I only knew then what I know now" We envy children. Hell, I envy my young self. When I was younger, I was much quicker to throw down and get in a fight than I am now. Three years ago, I went to India and I wanted to grab a bull by the horns. I found a bull, I walked up to it, I reached my arms out but for some reason I just couldn't bring myself to grab on to those horns. If it were eight years ago, I believe I would have grabbed the bull's horns...but alas, it wasn't. Although I'm more childish than my peers, I strive to me even more childish than I am now. The only thing I wont borrow from my childhood self is the dependance on people. I like being independant, now that that's out of the way, I'll work back to getting the same attitude I had as a child.
All this is why I will proudly say I'm a boy not a man. And I will act childish, because I am comfortable with myself. I'm sorry you can't be childish too
