Eternal Youth

Stolen, and mutilated, and not obtained - but sought in shared pursuit

Youth isn’t ours to hold forever, but attempts to find and keep it safe aren’t criminal.

The true crime is in hoarding the whisps of youth we find in beauty, hope, courage, or even our angst. Bottling and selling appearances are lies, at best, mutilations. So go ahead, try to convict me of a crime that can’t exist. Conviction is already a part of everything I do.

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"Youth is not a time of life. It is a state of mind. It is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips, and supple knees. It is matter 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 and the love of ease. This often exists in a person of 60 more than a person of 20. 

Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.

 Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust. Whether 60 or 16 there is in every human beings heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living.  

In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station. So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage, and power from humanity and from the infinite, so long are you young. When aerials are down your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism then you are grown up - even at 20. 

But as long as your aerials are up to catch the waves of optimism there is hope that you may die young (or never die)."

Adapted from Samuel Ullman a la Thandi, The End of the World