SLIPS AWAY WHEN WE ARE NOT LOOKING
Monday Apr. 9, 2018
Youth is short, then you get old.
Youth is not wasted on the young – youth can be kept, nurtured and recycled throughout our lives. I was once advised by a client, Ben Farnham, (I was 35, Ben was 84 at the time), “Mark, make lots of younger friends. When you get to be my age too many of your friends and colleagues are gone”. Or, in the words of Charles de Gaulle, “One is young and then one ceases to be so.”
I don’t agree with de Gaulle. One is young and continues to think that way, or not. Choice, not a circumstance.
As Stanislaw Jerzy Lec wrote, “Youth is a gift of nature, but age is a work of art.”
Maybe we can be both young and old, at the same time, together or alone.
Reader feedback:
WHAT I KNEW / WHAT I KNOW
I would do quite a few things differently. Some decisions I made were wrong in retrospect because they did not have the result I was looking for. I was often pretty good at picking an appropriate objective but I sometimes chose the wrong path to get there. I learned a lot from those errors, AN, Calgary, AB
Hi Mark, While I always enjoy your columns, I find today’s a little negative – and perhaps, self-indulgent. Of course we review past events – but I don’t think the point is to second guess our decisions/actions. It is to learn and grow as a person. Isn’t that the essence of life? To keep improving as a human being. To strive for perfection – if not in this life, then the next. I personally find no gain in regret or self pity – in fact, it easily leads to a downward spiral. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Learn from the event, let it go and move on. There are new experiences to be lived every single day …. In my humble opinion , Cheers, GG, Calgary, AB
