The responsibilities that follow maturity, according to Susan Neiman.

Neiman:  I think the duty of maturity is to recognize the difference between what is and what ought to be and to try to always keep your eye on both, which sounds much easier to do than it is. I think the duty of maturity is increasingly--and the older I get actually the more important I think it is--is not to resign, not to tell yourself that being realistic means giving up your hopes and your ideals. Most of the culture tells us that the best part of our lives are the times between--oh, I don’t know--16 and 25. I think anybody who’s made it over that period of time would rarely want to live- have those years back again. They’re really hard. You’re figuring out who you are, you’re figuring out your strengths and weaknesses, but the whole culture is combined in telling us that that’s the best time of our lives, but just think about what the message is ‘cause there’s no empirical evidence. In fact, there’s a host of psychological studies that show in the most cases people actually get happier as they get older. So the only reason I can think of for blasting that message is to prepare us for the idea that we shouldn’t expect much out of life and that’s a mistake.