Friday, January 15, 2010

Oh, To Be Young Again!

DISCOVERY is a great thing. In reining in my diet over the past few months, becoming more self-disciplined regarding what, when and how much I eat, I’ve re-discovered something I can’t recall since my youth. Most mornings I wake hungry. What a blight it is on Westerner’s lives that we eat far too richly!

It seems that out of all the pains and annoyances that being alive provides us, we still pine after being young. And there’s a paradox of age here. When we’re young we don’t enjoy it so much for lack of experience, know-how, faith, and especially the lack of respect of others we receive; especially those older or more credible than us. Then when we finally reach some level of chronological maturity we look back to our fading youth. It seems no-win.

Youth is a state of mind.

We have the opportunity to learn now what has always been. Youth is about things of the heart as much as anything else. That’s the start of it. “Feelings” of youth are designed there.

If there are one-hundred-year-olds who can still laugh genuinely (i.e. youthfully) at corny jokes why then can’t we embrace things of youth too, throwing off the shackles of the things that make us feel old.

‘Old age’ is a vast nonsense we invoke upon ourselves because we give up weakly on the creative vision of possibility, opportunity, and the optimism of hope. Life tends to beat this out of us because—for one—our nature is to succumb to the pressures, never wanting to disappoint people, evoking “failure.”

Hold off on the plastic surgery. Your youth comes from within you. It comes when you decide to make time for yourself; for rest and revitalisation. It comes from transcending yourself.

Youth comes from breaking past the normal, default drive that hems us all in.

Imagine now how your increased spiritual sense can bring life, hope and space to your mental and emotional outlook, and hence even breathe life into your physical capacity.

Breathe, youthfully. Think, ‘Forever young.’

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

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