I always
like to joke about how I’ll always be an angsty teenager at heart, forever
seeing the world as unfair and fighting the “establishment” (whatever the hell
that is). And to be honest, there is
some truth to that. The world is unfair, and much of what we do is, consciously
or not, dictated by our respective cultures.
But all that is kind of beside the point of this post, which is me
wondering and rambling about why we tend to glorify youth.
In his
book, The World until Yesterday, Jared
Diamond talks a bit about the “cult of youth” we’ve created in many countries
today, and it’s really stuck with me. The
cult of youth is in America, and it’s very
much in Korea as well. Young holds
more value than old. Young is fast,
pretty, and exciting. Old is…well,
old. People talk about growing up as if
their life is ending; they resign themselves to certain activities because they’re
“too old” for that.
True, some
things should be given up as we age (like stupid decisions involving alcohol),
but ageing doesn’t have to be seen as this slow march towards inevitable death.
Rather, as you age I think you should always be challenging yourself in
different ways. Set goals of what you
want to be doing in your 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s…etc. Then, when you hit those landmark ages,
instead of looking back on the days you’ll never get back, look ahead to the things
you’ll accomplish in the coming years, but couldn’t before.
The
youthful part of our lives just seems more valuable because that’s all we see
in pop culture, but being young and pretty is only a small fraction of our
lives here. If we spend most of our
lives glorifying and reminiscing about the times we had and how we looked in
our youth, then we’ve just wasted the majority of our lives.
I know I
won’t be 25 forever, and growing up does indeed scare me. However, I very much look forward to the
things I’ll be able to work on in my later years that I can’t work on right
now.
There is
indeed value in all ages.
