WHATCHA GONNA DO?
"Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret," according to Benjamin Disraeli. If he said it, who am I to disagree.
The blunder of youth stretches to age 25 according to author James Hilton. Who further states that those 25 years finds us too young for things. The next 25 years just right. The last 25 years that make up a life announce that we are too old for things. That's a pretty short time frame that illumines a life.
So where do I begin in confessing my youthful blunders? I could entitle another blog. And fill it with lots and lots of entries. But how else do we learn? As parents, though, we want our children to have it easier than we did. We want to shelter them from some of the pitfalls we found on our own or against our parents' wishes.
Manhood a struggle? You know it. Everyday. But well worth it, too. Why? Because we learn endurance and patience. But I tend to go along more with Hilton here: it goes so fast. Much more so that the other 2 twenty-five year epochs. (I suppose the word choice epoch is a bit of a stretch in some ways.) I remember it as if it were yesterday when I pulled the curtain at a Lincoln School 6th grade Variety Show where an act sang "It's So Hard To Say Good-bye to Yesterday," and thinking how quickly those years had passed for our daughter on the brink of junior high. And that's been 17 years ago, when I, too, passed from one epoch to another.
As far as old age being a regret, well, that's right. Regretting that getting older has to be physically painful. Knee replacements, hip replacements, arthritis ( too bad there's no replacement for that), etc, et. al, ad infinity. Stiffness I use to hear about from my parents is a good old buddy now. I seem to use some of their same descriptors, too; "I'm stiff as a board," can be heard by me. Just this morning as I exited my wife's small sports car, I thought of how graceful I must have looked trying to bend knees that refuse to bend. Chester from Gunsmoke came to mind. It doesn't get a whole lot better when I have to crawl into my SUV, and it's not that big a step.
But as far as regretting youth and manhood, well I didn't exactly do it my way as Frankie sang, but had many more things I liked than what I didn't like.
I guess both Disraeli and Hilton were right. But I also think of another quote that applies to an ex-high school teacher who saw it on a daily basis. "When in high school, you can't wait to get out and grow up. When you're out of high school, you wish you could go back."
"Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret," according to Benjamin Disraeli. If he said it, who am I to disagree.
The blunder of youth stretches to age 25 according to author James Hilton. Who further states that those 25 years finds us too young for things. The next 25 years just right. The last 25 years that make up a life announce that we are too old for things. That's a pretty short time frame that illumines a life.
So where do I begin in confessing my youthful blunders? I could entitle another blog. And fill it with lots and lots of entries. But how else do we learn? As parents, though, we want our children to have it easier than we did. We want to shelter them from some of the pitfalls we found on our own or against our parents' wishes.
Manhood a struggle? You know it. Everyday. But well worth it, too. Why? Because we learn endurance and patience. But I tend to go along more with Hilton here: it goes so fast. Much more so that the other 2 twenty-five year epochs. (I suppose the word choice epoch is a bit of a stretch in some ways.) I remember it as if it were yesterday when I pulled the curtain at a Lincoln School 6th grade Variety Show where an act sang "It's So Hard To Say Good-bye to Yesterday," and thinking how quickly those years had passed for our daughter on the brink of junior high. And that's been 17 years ago, when I, too, passed from one epoch to another.
As far as old age being a regret, well, that's right. Regretting that getting older has to be physically painful. Knee replacements, hip replacements, arthritis ( too bad there's no replacement for that), etc, et. al, ad infinity. Stiffness I use to hear about from my parents is a good old buddy now. I seem to use some of their same descriptors, too; "I'm stiff as a board," can be heard by me. Just this morning as I exited my wife's small sports car, I thought of how graceful I must have looked trying to bend knees that refuse to bend. Chester from Gunsmoke came to mind. It doesn't get a whole lot better when I have to crawl into my SUV, and it's not that big a step.
But as far as regretting youth and manhood, well I didn't exactly do it my way as Frankie sang, but had many more things I liked than what I didn't like.
I guess both Disraeli and Hilton were right. But I also think of another quote that applies to an ex-high school teacher who saw it on a daily basis. "When in high school, you can't wait to get out and grow up. When you're out of high school, you wish you could go back."
posted by TQ @ 5:28 AM
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