When you reach a certain age — and that age is different for each of us — it is natural that the turning of the calendar page to a new year brings with it thoughts, not just of new hopes and opportunities, but of one more candle on the next birthday cake.

We know we can’t stay young forever, and a glance at the reflection in the mirror only serves as confirmation. Another couple of laugh lines, a bit more slack in the jaw, the inadvertent “grunt” when we stand up . . . and let’s not even mention the waistline!

Yet in our minds, we’re still 30-something: grown-up, responsible, but with the same irreverent sense of humor, the same longing for adventure, the same joy in sharing a good time or an intense conversation with an old friend, and at least a measure of the same idealistic nature we possessed when we were young and foolish.

This quote — from a book I admittedly have not read — sums it up for me:

“I’m not ready to let the youthful part of myself go yet. If maturity means becoming a cynic, if you have to kill the part of yourself that is naive and romantic and idealistic — the part of you that you treasure most — to claim maturity, is it not better to die young but with your humanity intact?”

– Kenneth Cain, “Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories From a War Zone”

I don’t know what emergency measures Cain had to resort to in order to survive in Cambodia and other war zones he visited in the ‘90s; but I do agree with his attitude toward aging with our values intact . . . which is fortunate, since it’s already far too late for me to die young.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
1/5/26