I have a
tendency to hang on to things that stir me within, occasionally during a bout of rummaging I’ll find them and read them once again. What follows is one of the many I've collected
over the years. I found it a couple of days ago and gave it another read. Enjoy.
DISCOVERED
HANGING IN A GHOST TOWN POST OFFICE IN THE MOJAVE DESERT
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 will, a quality of the imagination, 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 of adventure with the love of ease.
This often exists in a man of 50, more than a boy of 20. Nobody grows old by
living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals, Years
wrinkles the skin- but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt,
self-distrust, fear, and despair…these are the long, long years that bow the
head and turn the growing spirit back to dust.
Whether 6 or 60, there is in every being’s
heart the love of wonder, the sweet amazement of the stars and the star like
things and thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events-the unfailing
child-like attitude for what is next…and the joy for 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 fears, as young as
your hope, and as old as your despair.
In
the central place of your heart, there is a wireless station. So long as it
receives messages of beauty hope, cheer, grandeur, and power of form the earth,
from men and from the infinite- just that long and no longer are you young.
When the wires are all down - and all the central
places of your heart are covered with snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism
– then you grow old indeed.
I had an epiphany when I passed 30. Anyone who is alive is young. Namaste.
