The Thing About Being Young …

April 27 2011

The thing about being young

I started out

before I was struck

by the presumption of “the”,

as if there was one definitive thing

discussion over.

The definite article

is like your know-it-all brother-in-law,

full of swagger, and certainty.

As in the truth  … the people

 …the thing,

a suspect word

when it can be invoked so easily

by poets and despots and priests,

a truly unholy alliance.

How nothing hurts

the morning after,

kissed away

by sleep.

How a year goes on and on,

half your life

so far.

How you will be an astronaut

when you grow up,

never having considered

phone sales.

How asking a girl out

makes your ears burn

your tongue turn dry as dust,

devoutly believing

this surely must get easier.

How 20-somethings

seem so grown-up,

and over 30

can’t be trusted.

Didn’t they say that, once?

That your love is pure

and permanent,

nothing to do with lust.

Or in return
with being loved.

That old people

were always that way.

That this is the very first time

it’s been done.

That you’ve never been understood,

and how good

self-pity feels.

And still does.

It’s only later you’ll learn

that those middle-aged women, and men

whom you and your friends

laughed about

poking and nudging each other

or were merely invisible,

were having much more fun

than your sullen smirking buddies.

Or than they themselves

ever did

young.

I’m always suspicious of grandiloquent pronouncements involving “the”:   a preacher, invoking the truth …a charismatic leader, speaking in the name of the people …or me, pronouncing the one thing. Because very few things are so singular and definitive that they justify the definite article.

Was it G. B. Shaw who so trenchantly said “youth is wasted on the young”? He was right, of course.

But in a culture that worships youth and fears age, we also romanticize our younger selves, forgetting the angst, insecurity, powerlessness, and lack of perspective that can at times make being young unbearable.

So this is a bit of a corrective. Time goes mercifully slow. Our bodies are indestructible. Everything in life is possible. Being as old as them is inconceivable. No one has ever been in love before; or at least never like this. And how delicious that self-righteous idealism feels. But …

“Happiness” studies bear this out. In general, people get more satisfied with life as they age. I believe the peak occurs somewhere in our late 40’s. Maybe worth the price of bad knees and thinning hair!