I am not old yet. I am certainly not young anymore either by internet standards. At 45 I am comfortably slightly past the middle point of life, and I have many who look at me and think I’m young and in the peak of health, and others who look up at me and think, “wow that is old.”
I have recently had more interactions with those in a position younger than me than I normally do, and I have come to realize an unusual value that I want to talk about that comes in two parts. I recently spoke about the contraction of life as we get older.
There is no mystery that grandparents are spryer, more alive, and more like their younger selves when their grandchildren or greatgrandchildren are around. But I have been thinking about something closer to my age bracket.
When I look ahead in my life, I see advancement, hope, and possibility, but I see less of it than when I was younger. This is not a negative thing. I have sacrificed possibility on the altar of reality, to become who I am. I had to, as all well adjusted adults do. We can’t hover forever between things, waiting to see, or someday we find we are nothing. But in that loss of possibility our horizons if not shrink they certainly change in scope. The people in my world who are younger than say twenty, are very different. They can still be almost anything.
So, when I speak with them, I find what can only be described as infectious hope. They want to go do things they haven’t done, and it reminds me of the things I have yet to do. But there is a more important piece which I have noticed only recently. There is an effect on the old, if we are right, and careful that what we say to the younger generation matters more by far than what we say to each other.
The mind of an adult is fairly well formed, the mind of a teenager is not finished yet. Every word you say goes into this complex self-assembling machine that is still working to figure out what he or she wants to be in the world, and if you instill a grain of falsehood it can damage them in a way that you can not do to adults. There has never been a more important time to pick your words carefully, remember your facts, and straighten out your truths because you are saying them to the next generation.
Why is this about “The old need the young?” if this is about the middle age and elderly imparting wisdom, and knowledge? The answer is because we all too often forget to sharpen our thoughts, sharpen our words, and pick them very carefully when we deal with our peers. Our relationship with the next generation reminds us to have a reason for all that we say. “Because,” is not a reason. If we live our lives correctly the next generation reminds us to defend our stance reasonably, to help them and speak the truth and act to them as best we know them.
Because someday, they will run the world. What kind of world will it be?
I hope you will do another deeper version of this later. Maybe as it relates to reading and writing, on be mindful of what you are communicating to your reader, and what wisdom is the author imparting to you? And maybe digging a little deeper into the effects of words' influences.