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The Stages of Life
A description of the three stages of life: youth, adulthood, and decline.
Youth
The youth are foolish but rarely wrong. This is a symptom of holding freedom as the highest value. Youth is still wild. And to be wild is to prioritize the health of the spirit over the health of the body. It is to put feeling alive over staying alive. This, wisdom applauds and intelligence rebukes.
Our history is our identity. The youth are granted an airy optimism because, having no life-record, nothing is yet real about them. Youth exists only as potential. They can live in a dreamed of future because they have only the ever-forgiven history of childhood behind them. There is no anchor of reality to contend with yet. One day they’ll have a record, and with it gain an understanding of their place in this world; not of where they imagined soaring to but where they have actually landed. Perhaps they’ll do everything they’ve set out to and reflect with a sense of superiority, since so many don’t; or maybe they’ll disappoint themselves, learn of their weaknesses, and be humbled and chafed by life. Either way, they have yet to reach a certain threshold in solidification, a consequence of accumulating an immutable past, which marks adulthood.
