I’ve thought for a long time that “youth is wasted on the young,” as author and dramatist George Bernard Shaw is credited to have once said. Now that I have entered into the not so “golden years,” I’m not so sure. Of course, the earlier years of one’s life have a whole lot of plusses and not a lot of minuses. Generally speaking, younger folk tend to have a lot more get-up-and-go, much better health, lots of new things to anticipate and look forward to in life, better-looking hair, and more freedom to go where and do what they want, when they want. And it goes without saying that they have acquired a functional level of tech-savviness before they have even left the playpen. On the other hand, they don’t know much yet, but that’s not a big deal when your best friend is named “Google.” People also say that the younger generation of today is lazy, but who cares when you have mom and dad’s basement to perpetually inhabit?
It’s the opposite for us older folk; not a lot of positives and a bucket-load of negatives. For many of us on the back side of life, whatever get-up-and-go we used to have has pretty much got up and left. My good friend Forrest back in California calls this stage of life the “Wonder Years,” as in, “I wonder what part of my body is going to hurt today?” We walk slower, think slower, sleep more (if we can sleep at all), and have a lot less food choices in our diets. Morning times can be especially difficult, as it now takes me three times as long to make my coffee. Actually, making the coffee is not the problem; discovering which kitchen cabinet I put the coffee container back in the day before is what slows me down. I recently realized that I have to pick up the pace inside my home when I am going from one room to another; if I just take my normal time getting there, occasionally I have to stop and think for a minute as to why I was going to that room in the first place. Retracing my steps doesn’t do any good because when I return to the room from whence I came, I just as often can’t remember why I returned there again. Kind of like Admiral Stockdale’s infamous opening statement in the 1992 vice-presidential debate, “Who am I? Why am I here?”
It’s not all bad news, however, for us “long in the tooth.” Senior discounts are a real advantage. When one is on a fixed income, saving 4 bucks at a movie theater translates into an extra dinner out (at Costco). A big plus is the strategic value of hearing aids; if I’m not wanting to listen to what is being said at any particular moment, I can just point to one of my ears and loudly proclaim, “I can’t hear you, the battery is dead!” Having “free time” for the first time in my life is pretty awesome. I remember being perpetually busy and tired for about 30 years straight, from the moment by first child came into the world to the day the last one moved out of the house. And one of the best things about old age is grandkids! There is a something of a perverse joy in spoiling the grandkids all day long and returning them to their folks (i.e. our grown-up kids) at the end of the day, just about the time they are getting cranky and difficult to manage. Not that I want it to be that way, it’s just the way it works. Other than that, though, old age can be pretty grim.
So why am I rethinking the adage about youth being wasted on the young? For one thing, if us old people had all the advantages of youth, we would be crying “no mas” before the first week was over. If you think about it, having the level of energy I once had decades ago would be a total disaster, considering the toll time has taken on my joints and muscles, among other things. My body just wouldn’t be able to handle it. That would be like putting a souped-up car engine into a VW bug. Like scripture says, you can’t put old wine into new wineskins. And I don’t want to be tech savvy; us aged people like our old ways. My desk calendar has served me well these past 50 years, why would I want to learn how to use the Google calendar now? Besides, by the time I figure out the latest technological gizmo, it will be outdated, and I would have to start all over learning the newest version. Forget that.
Aside from all of that, however, this latest chapter of life has facilitated something new to me, something precious, something that would far surpass all the many advantages of being young. Slowing down physically has opened up an amazing door to a kind of spiritual intimacy with God that I’ve neither understood nor experienced in the earlier decades of my life. I memorized Ps. 46:10 many years ago (“Be still, and know that I am God”), but never seemed to be able to live it out, rarely finding even five minutes to “be still.” Once you have two kids and a mortgage, life is pretty much a merry-go-round that you cannot seem to exit for any measurable amount of time. If you are trying to live a godly life, be a godly spouse, parent with biblical intentionality, be faithful in utilizing your spiritual gifts for the benefit of the body, serve your boss at work as if you were serving the Lord, and be an all-around “light” to those around you, how do you find time to “be still?” There may be a way, but I never discovered it. . . . that is, until now. For the first time in my Christian life, I am starting to learn what it means to be still before God, listening to what He has to say to me, enjoying His presence, and adoring Him for all of the awesomeness that He is. I’m just now taking baby steps, but a whole, new, and incomparably exciting adventure of eternal consequence is opening up before me.
So, no, youth is definitely not wasted on the young, according to my new way of thinking. I am forever grateful for all that I was able to experience during the earlier years of my life. The things that come with youth are a blessing from the Lord and are not to be disparaged. And if a young person can carve out regular time to “be still” and commune with our heavenly Father in the midst of all the demands the early decades of life impose upon us, so much the better. But for us older folks, the typical negative features of aging, humanly speaking, offer us a unique and invaluable opportunity to “draw near” to God (James 4:8) in a way that was not very practical in the days of our youth. And when we do so, the glorious promise of God is that “He will draw near to [us].” Amen and Amen.
