I am young.
The realization hits like a stack of books sometimes.
I am young.
Why, of all times do I need to realize this, now? I am young, it is a nervous point for me, a very nervous point. I don't like it. It is a source of anxiety for me. When I am leading and writing rituals I find myself constantly second-guessing myself on account my youth. I mean, I'm not very old. I can't even legally drink yet. It always crops up when I'm leading rites though, or when I'm giving a person older than me a couple of pointers.
I am young.
Something about knowing this sometimes makes things not feel right. I'm trying to get a Demos off the ground, it feels weird organizing things sometimes. Nineteen year old guys don't usually try to do these things, do they? I need to organize community events and try to get people older than myself to help, and that intimidates me.
I am young.
I still get surprised when people with jobs and families and actual, ya know, big responsibilities take my opinions seriously and take time out to respond to me. It is appreciated of course, it just leaves me feeling weird sometimes when I'm vigorously debating with someone who is 10, 20, or 30 years my senior. I second-guess and wonder at times if I should say anything at all. I wonder if I'm ever actually saying things that are new to them, and I always wonder how much what I'm saying is going to be dismissed as youthful naivety.
I am young.
I always appreciated the ways my youth has worked to my advantage. I have been pretty keenly aware that I have a relatively healthy body on basically account of my youth. I don't really have to worry about gaining weight, and I still have that get-up-and-go energy most days. But I am just starting to realize the ways in which my youth works against me. The times it demoralizes me, the times it intimidates me, the times I intimidate myself. The way I can't quite seem to express any real gravitas because of it. Not from refusal of others, but from refusal of self. Can I be young and serious? I don't know. It always leaps to mind "youth is wasted on the young", am I wasting my youth? I don't know.
I am young.
In my teen years i kinda wished i was like everyone else in my class ie going binge drinking, having sexual experiences etc and was a bit miffed that i was the only "teachers pet" coz i was always stuck indoors being the "goody two shoes" and doing my homewordk but to be honest I don't regret not having been able to get drunk every friday night etc as it has actually given me a more realistic view of how NOT to live ones youth by wasting it on binge drinking and teen sex and being disrespectful to ones parents. i did have an experience of alcohol drinking and got tipsy at a birthday party and i was hungover all weekend and couldn't do any of my homework for Monday to which i learned a very harsh lesson from my teachers that day. No wonder my so called classmates kept getting into trouble and hated me for being the "teachers pet" and you know what i'm glad of it, coz i know to drink responsibly and that to have a good time does not mean you need to drink to do so.
ReplyDeleteI admit I was surprised to learn how old you are. I'd assumed you were closer to my age. Though I tend to assume *everybody* I talk to is my age until I find out otherwise. Bit myopic, really.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the only one who can tell if you're wasting your youth or not is you. And what you think about it now is not necessarily what you'll think 10, 20, 30 years from now. There are definitely things I wish I had done differently in high school, in college. But I also know that it would have been completely against my nature and sense of self at the time, so it's not so much wishing "Oh, if only I had done that differently" as wishing "Oh, if only I'd been a different person!" I can't fault myself for being true to what I knew of myself at the time, even though I now could wish that things hadn't been that way.
And besides, I'm pretty content with the way things are for me right now. If I had done those different things in the past, I can't be sure that I'd have ended up here. So in the end, I can't really be anything but accepting of all the blocks that went into building me.
Really, I think that as long as you're being true to what you know of yourself, to the best of your ability, you're not wasting your youth. (Besides, I always read that phrase as "Young people do stupid things with their boundless energy and health, dammit, why can't older people who know better have some of it instead??")
Haha, yeah, you aren't the only person who has been a bit surprised by my age since I've posted this. I'm not sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing!
DeleteI'm hoping I'm not wasting my youth, it'd be mighty disappointing if I was. I don't foresee myself looking back and going "wow, I sure did suck back then!" but then again people rarely feel like they are going to be disappointed with themselves in the future. It is being far too aware of that fact that drives me nuts on days when I'm feeling tense, which are fewer as we approach spring.
You do make some very good points though, and I highly appreciate your comment. It puts some things into a different perspective to me.