A reflection on youth and brevity
I lived eighteen years with the unshakeable conviction that adulthood was the apex of life. The world of adults had always existed as a place of mysticism, and it was rare that I ever looked at an adult— be it my mother, my teachers, or a couple in a shopping mall—without a peculiar combination of envy and awe. I believed that adulthood marked the point at which life suddenly becomes simple, and I couldn’t wait to get to that moment; to finally enter into the world of adults and share in that divine simplicity I believed I’d never experienced before.
In the years I am referring to, any proclamation on the subject of youth—a poem, a singsong saying, a painting of cherubs with their supple, blushed faces—bemused me. Celebrations of youth seemed shallow; a glorification of sickly sweetness and senseless exuberance. Adulthood, as far as I knew, promised personhood. This belief has implications of its own, but it was a belief I held in my period of naivety. I worshipped what I believed adulthood to be, while failing to relish my youth being naive and envious and full of child-like awe. I lived eighteen years of idealism: yet another cornerstone of what it means to be young.
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There came a particular moment, however, when I suddenly felt a peculiar envy towards children. I don’t know when this moment came, but I felt it as I drove past playgrounds, or when I heard those sweet, senseless giggles that could only have come from a child.
It was only after my eighteenth year that I began to lose sight of my childish ideals. Adult matters, once cinematic, had lost all their charm. The bounds and possibilities that adult freedom imbued became endless puzzles instead. Everything I had previously believed had lost its novelty. Perhaps this is what it means to become an adult, I thought.
Robert Herrick once wrote, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” a prompt that is seemingly simple. Make haste, for time is running out. Hurry, there will be no other time as good as this. Have I gathered my rosebuds? I don’t know that I have. Time—my old, slow, friend—has betrayed me, and I feel as though I’m nearing a dead end.
I have written before on the topic of beginnings and ends. Not so long ago I realized that I am good at neither. Now, I realize that beginnings and ends do not exist independently of each other. The two mingle and intertwine in strange and unexpected ways. The sun will set, the lights will go down, and you will be young and old all at once, trapped in your transition. This is my story of grappling with two extremes. This is me explaining to you my experience with the dichotomy of childhood and adulthood, each a reflection of the other.
Not so long ago I longed for time to be on my side. I wanted something to begin. All along, something was happening. Something simple and sweet, the stuff of youth.
And now I’m on the outside, and I understand what it is that makes youth a marvel. In the world of children, all is brief, and with brevity comes a fleeting, uncomplicated kind of time. Youth is youth because one doesn’t yearn for it until it has already passed. I had never realized that I was living a child’s life until childhood became only a memory. Perhaps the practice of remembrance makes all things grand. This is the irony of idealism. This is the mystery of youth.
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