Youth

Older people, and I am getting to be one, were once young.  Not only do they remember being young, but they remember when they never imagined they would get old.

It happens though.  Slowly, so slowly it is hard to notice, the body ages and changes. The word "inevitable" comes to mind.  We are used to fixing problems.  Something is broken?  We get it repaired.  Or replaced. We like to be in control.  But you cannot replace your entire body. There are some ways in which we can slow down the aging process and so have some control.  Healthy living--a good diet and regular exercise--can certainly be very helpful. Time, though, marches on, and it seems to do so at an increasingly rapid pace.  Where did it all go to?

Remembering our own youth is, it seems to me, mostly an introspective activity.  We may reflect within ourselves about when we were young, but others see us as we now are.  They don't think of us as people who once were young. To them we are older people.

My memories of my grandmother are of an elderly lady--a wonderful human being, but elderly neverthless, I recollect asking one of my aunts, when I was a young child, about a painting on my grandma's wall.  It was a painting of a beautiful young woman.  I remember laughing, as a child, when I was told it was a picture of my grandma.  At that age I could not wrap my mind around this concept that old people were once young.

And yet they were once young.  All of us were at one point newborn babies, starting out on the inevitable trajectory of life.  All babies, if they live long enough, become old.  At least their bodies grow old.

Our spirits, our minds, are different. If we are wise enough to turn to the Lord and keep our sense of wonder, and avoid toxic emotions such as bitterness and resentment--emotions which poison the spirit--we will remain young inside.

My grandmother had an aging body, but she was young inside. She was full of fun, of love, of kindness.  She was a child of God,  This was brought home to me just recently.  I was sent some photos of her when she was only fifteen or so. As I looked at her as she looked over a hundred years ago, she looked very different from the way I remembered her in her later years.  And yet in a way she looked the same.  That childlike and innocent spirit so evident in the photos, never departed from her. As she grew wiser, her childlike and innocent spirit also grew and deepened.

I believe she is in heaven.  I believe she looks young and even more beautiful than when she was fifteen here on earth.

None of us have to grow old.