“Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels, but old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young,” J.K. Rowling

As we celebrated our 31st Independence anniversary recently as a free nation, we have found ourselves in a fortunate position where most of our population is young and youthful. While we are getting older, we are still a young nation in terms of years of independence and population, but we certainly have a mature spirit about us.

If there is one thing we can take from the recent celebrations is that young people are brave and they seem to get braver as the stakes get higher. As those who fought for our independence told their stories and relived their experiences, their youthfulness shone through; even though age has caught up to them, they still remain young at heart.

Youth is not a period of life; it is a state of mind, an effect of will, a quality of the imagination, an emotional intensity, a victory of courage over shyness – of the taste for adventure on the love of comfort. 

You don’t get old for living a certain number of years; we get old because we have deserted our ideal. The years wrinkle the skin and renouncing its ideal wrinkles the soul. Concerns, doubts, fears and despair are the enemies that slowly make us lean towards the earth and become dust before death. 

Time will eventually catch up to us all, but it doesn’t have to find us with old, wrinkled souls. While we are young, we can be forgiven for wanting too much or believing too much – but as we get older, we cannot be forgiven for forgetting our young ideals.

The young is the one who is amazed and amazing. He asks like the insatiable child and after he defies events and finds joy in the game of life. 

You are as young as your faith and as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence; as young as your hopes and as old as your despair. 

You will stay young as long as you remain receptive to what is beautiful, good and great to the messages of nature, man and life. 

If one day your heart was to be bitten by pessimism and gnawed at by pessimism and cynicism, may God have mercy on your old man’s soul.

Olavi Popyeinawa

Twitter: @olavipopyeinawa

Email: olavipopyeinawa@gmail.com