Ideal Illogic

America's worship of youth is, at one level, simply illogical. People want to be some ideal age (such as 18 or 25) so that they have all their best years ahead of them: career, marriage, family, retirement, with none of that "capital" spent. At that ideal age, they will have done few of the things that constitute life. It is all in the future.

But the minute they start spending this capital, they are in fact aging. By the time they have done all the things that constitute a rich and full life, they are old. Then they wish they were young again. But if they were young again, they would not have lived that rich and full life.

If the youth-worshipers are right, we should all want to die young. But we don't, and in fact consider the premature death of the young to be a great loss.

Let's start honoring age as indispensable and the aged as valuable assets to the rest of us. They have the accumulated experiences and (we hope) the wisdom to help the rest of us on our life journey.