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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 a matter of will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs in life.
Youth means a tempermental pedominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in an adult of 60 more than a child 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 winkles 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 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 yourself, your peers, and from the Infinite, so long are you young.
When the antennas are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicsim and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at 20, but as long as your antennas are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at 80.
Samuel Ullman was born in 1840 in Germany and came to the USA as a
boy. He fought in the Civil War and settled in Birmingham, Alabama. He was
a hardware merchant with a penchant for public service that continues 73 years
after his death at 83 in 1923. In the last few years more than $36,000 from
Japanese royalties on a book and a cassette reading of his work has gone to the
University of Alabama at Birmingham scholorship fund. Not bad for a man who
started writing in his 70s.
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Viking Services. Last modified November 17, 1996. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. Other trademarks or are the property of their respective owners. |