The fountain of youth! Regenerating creams and lotions! “Oh, to be young again!”
We are a youth-oriented culture out of sync with our demographics. Youth is idealized by the old, impatiently tolerated by the young, and anxiously claimed by those in the middle.
Those with honest memories can review youth as a time of fun, strength, and adventure. Also of uncertainty, anxiety, and humility. The young are eager to grow up. By the time we realize we have done so, we lament those other advantages of youth: unquestioned health, limitless opportunity, an apparently infinite lifespan. We forget the trials we were glad to escape: peer pimple pressure, uncertainty about the future, lack of a solid body of knowledge to call our own.
Youth is not all it’s cracked up to be. Old age is fraught with problems and limitations. Middle age is so hectic with career, courting, and child-rearing, we can hardly stop to enjoy it.
Ironically, the best way to deal with this quandary of life is to maximize each stage. Appreciate the vigor of our youthful days. Trust that the future will unfold constructively. Watch and enjoy the growing family or career in the middle ages. Believe that everything will turn out right, or that you will make the necessary corrections. Savor the perspective of greater years. Not just to look back in understanding of our human antics, but to scan forward to more discovery.
The trick is to find all the happiness we can, at any age, in every moment. In so doing, we do not glamorize youth: we glamorize life.