Youth
Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of pink cheeks, red lips and flexible knees; it is a matter of will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotion, it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a dispositional control of courage over cowardice, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60 more than a boy 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 looking forward to wonder, the endless child-like appetite of what’s next and the joy of the game of living.① In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station: so long as it is receiving messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from God, you are young.②
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at 20, but as long as your aerials are up to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at 80.
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