Youth And What It Means

Recent days have given the SCTravelersX3 much cause for reflection.  We have had lots of stuff going on around home - including leadership changes in organizations to which we belong, a flurry of activity as the school year winds down, a recent batch of family birthdays and anniversaries  - and then - many "current events" stories that cause us to shake our heads - and other parts!!!  I'm not going to go through all of those in detail but they brought to mind several things we all think about from time to time.  First - a lot of stuff I mentioned above has to do with young folks - people who don't have quite as many accumulated years as others of us.  Thinking about "young people", I got to considering something I read a while back and want to share with you.  It's an essay by Samuel Ullman who lived in the deep South a while back.  (His birthday was April 13th so he might have been included in our April celebrations if he'd been around!!)  Ol' Sam kinda went against the grain when he advocated equal education for black and white kids in Alabama.  That, alone, would have been noteworthy but - Ullman had been a Confederate soldier and his stance on education was taken in the late 1800s!!  He believed in "youth" passionately but the important thing was how he defined it.  He said:

"Youth is not entirely a time of life – it is a state of mind.  It is not wholly a matter of ripe cheek, red lips or supple knees.  It is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life.  It means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over a love of ease. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair – these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust. Whatever your years, there is in every being’s heart the love of wonder, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing child-like appetite for what is 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 self confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair. In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long are you young. When the wires are all down and your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and then only are you grown old."

Read it again, folks!!

But then, I turned to the events that have taken place in recent days - locally, nationally and internationally.  To me, we are seriously shortchanging the development of our young people.  I listen to explanations people give about lots of things today and am absolutely astonished at the evasiveness, the "self-centeredness", the attempts to deflect and the downright "untruths" they don't hesitate to project.  I don't care where you live - U. S. or elsewhere;  what your state, community, city or neighborhood is; what position you happen to hold.  If you distort the truth you are nibbling bits and pieces off of your soul.  John Ruskin, a contemporary of Ullman's, gave us great advice when he said:
 
 "Accustom the children to close accuracy of statement, both as a principle of honor, and accomplishment of language, making truth the test of perfect language and giving the intensity of a moral purpose to the study and art of words; then, carrying the accuracy into all habits of thought and observation, so as always to think of things as they truly are, as far as in us rests.  And it does rest much in our power, for all false thoughts and seeings come mainly of our thinking of what we have no business with, and looking for things we want to see instead of things which ought to be seen. 

In thinking about Ullman and Ruskin I remembered another contemporary of theirs, a lady who should be required study for women wanting to learn more about the groundbreaking female leaders in our country - Mary Esther Harding, M.D.  Although born in England, much of her most influential work was done in the U. S. - including her powerful book "The I and Not I."  That book seems to describe a phenomenon we are seeing all too often in the detachment of people from the consequences of their actions.  An expert in the fields of medicine, psychiatry and sociology, Dr. Harding was a powerful thinker in her day and all three of the three folks we cited here - all born in countries other than our own - have a lot of which to remind us.  Check them out.

Well, I certainly got philosophical with this one, didn't I?  But - periodically we need to step back and take a look at where we are, how we got here and what's next on the itinerary.  Hopefully, we'll be able to concentrate on "TRAVELING" next time.  Come on back soon!! See ya.