My Thoughts
Youth
Youth is not a time of life--it is a state of mind. It is not a matter
of red 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 a
life of ease. This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of
twenty. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people
grow old by deserting their ideals.
Years may wrinkle 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 seventy or sixteen, there is in every being's heart a love of
wonder; the sweet amazement at the stars and and starlike things and
thoughts; the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing, childlike
appetite for what comes next, and the joy in 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 place of your heart there is a wireless station. So long
as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, grandeur, courage and
power from the earth, from men and from the Infinite--so long are
you young. When the wires are all down and the central places of
your heart are covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of
cynicism, then you are grown old, indeed!
Samuel Ullman
