Man´s youth

This is one of those mornings when you wake up, eat something and start to read the newspaper, and then you continue reading everything in front of you. It was what happened to me. So, after reading the news, I started to read some articles and excerpts about different things that were in my stylistic´s book. There was one that led me to a different place. It made me think. I decided to copy it here. Maybe it can do the same in you, in a good way.


Man´s youth



MAN'S YOUTH IS A WONDERFUL thing: it is so fulll of anguish and of magic and he never comes to know it as it is, until it has gone from him forever. It is the thing whose passing he watched with infinite sorrow and regret, it is the thing whose loss he must lament forever, and it is the thing whose loss he easily welcomes with a sad secret joy, the thing he would never re-live again. Could it be restored to him by any magic?

Why is this? The reason is that the strange and bitter miracle of life is nowhere else so evident as in our youth. And what is the essence of that strange and bitter miracle of life which we feel is poignantly, so unutterably, with such a bitter pain and joy, when we are young? It is this: that being RICH, we are poor; that being MIGHTY, we can yet have nothing; that SEEING, BREATHING, SMELLING, TASTING all around us the impossible wealth and glory of this earth- though with God nothing shall be impossible, feeling with an intolerable certitude that the whole structure of the enchanted life- the most fortunate, wealthy, good and happy life that any man as ever known- is ours- is at once, immediately and forever, the moment that we choose to take a step, or stretch a hand, or say a word- we yet know that we can really keep, hold, take and possess forever- nothing. (This is not to discourage you, but to spur you into being an achiever and to make you add colors to your destiny.). All passes, nothing lasts; the moment that we put our hand upon it, it melts away like smoke, is gone forever, and the snake is eating at our heart again; we see then what we are and what our lives must come to.

A young man is so strong, so certain, so mad and so lost. He has everything and is able to use nothing. He hurls the great shoulder of his strenght forever against phantasmal barriers, (while those phantasmal barriers could have been made not to exist, he is a wave whose power explodes in lost mid-oceans under timeless skies, he reaches out to grip a fume of painted smoke, he wants all, feels the thirst and power for everything, and finally gets nothing.
Thoughtless of money or the accumulation of material possessions, man is nonetheless defeated in the end by his own greed, a greed that makes the avarice of king midas seem paltry by comparison.
And that is the reason why, when youth is gone, every man will look back upon that period of life with infinite sorrow and regret. It is the better sorrow and regret of man who knows that once he had a great treasure and got nothing from it, of a man who knows that he had strenght enough for everything and never used it.