Stages of Youth

When I was about twenty eight years old I picked up a couple of young hitchhikers. We drove together for about fifteen minutes and struck up a brief conversation. They were teenagers and were amazed when they heard my age. “You are friggin old.”

I was feeling pretty old at that time, not knowing what I was going to do with my life and feeling I should be well on the way to doing it. At fifty-five it is funny to look back now. I know that I was not old at twenty eight, and appeared so from the vantage point of the kids at the time. I was simply in a stage of youth, a different stage from my riders.

We live in such an age conscious society, and most of us are not comfortable with aging. It is a good idea to shift one's relationship to the whole process. I encourage my students to see themselves in a stage of youth rather than identifying with getting old. If you tell anyone twenty years older you that you are old they will laugh in your face. It is all relative.

Do not allow others to define your development. If you see yourself as old, you will fulfill that perception. If you see yourself at a stage of youth  you will frame your life in a different way, one that promotes vitality rather than limitation.