Why, with what we know about wisdom, time, and experience, are we still a nation of youth following fanatics? I see no issue enjoying the beauty and innocence of youth – I do so daily – but when we run in reverse to hold onto a look and feel that no longer belongs to us – we miss where we are now. We foolishly dismiss all we’ve gained through the years. This is not only disturbing, it’s destructive.

Life provides its stumbles, but if we are consistently looking backward, we are traveling in the wrong direction.

The beauty of youth is not the beauty of middle or old age, and that’s as it should be. But let us save the baby from the doom of being discarded with the bath water.

Youth is smooth skin, strength and vitality of conviction, wonderful and often untried ideas, the excitement and stimulation of perpetual motion.

With the advent of age come wrinkles, but we are no less beautiful. We slow down to notice and smell red, pink and yellow roses. We own more information and experience than most young people can imagine. We are softer around the edges, and usually, our hearts have been through enough for us to embrace a compassion that the young may see as weakness. We know better – and someday – so will they. Sometimes young people are curtailed by their age, although there is the occasional old soul.

Youth is a wondrous and magical time along with its stresses and growing pains. Getting older can be a time with pluses too – we are usually more settled, more confident, more comfortable in our own skin.  We have our battle scars, aches and pains and wrinkles but all in all, the stages of our life are magnificent, each with its own set of challenges and obstacles.

The trick is enjoying the stage we are in, now.

LOVE SIMPLY

DREAM BIG

BE GRATEFUL

OFFER KINDNESS

LAUGH LOTS