Can You Re-Define "Youth?"

Here is a piece offered by friend, Meg Newhouse of Passion and Purpose: Third Age Life Crafting. The author is "Anonymous."

Youth is not a time of life -- it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of ripe cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man over fifty more than in a man of twenty.

Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt and self distrust, fear and despair -- these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the spirit back to dust.

Whether 70 or 16, there is in every being's heart the love of wonder, the sweet amazement of the stars and starlike things and thought, the undaunted change of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what next, and the joy of the game of life.

You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

In the central part of your heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage, grandeur and power from the earth, from men and the Infinite, so long are you young.

When the wires are all down and all the central place of your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then are you grown old indeed and may God have mercy on your soul.

Are there images that resonate for you in this piece, (obviously written by a man before the age of sensitivity to gender!)?

I find that I am "younger" now than I was decades ago. Is that because of my new found "courage over timidity, appetite for adventure over the love of ease?" Or the "appetite for what next, and the joy of the game of life?"

What do you find in this piece that you'd like to pass on as a legacy to those younger than you in years? What pieces do you struggle with? Write to me at Karma@LifeSpringCoaching.com or click the comment button below this post.