I Don't Wanna Grow Up!

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.