YouTH

Youth is not a time of life
- it is a state of mind

It’s 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 the 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-distress, 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 starlight 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 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 are you grown old, indeed!

Age is a quality of mind-
If you have left your dreams behind,
If hope is lost,
If you no longer look ahead,
If your ambitions’ fires are dead-

Then you are old.

But if from life you take the best
And if in life you keep the jest,
If love you hold-
No matter how the years go by,
No matter how the birthdays fly,

YOU ARE NOT OLD!

--Anonymous