Article 1 - "CREATING THE ETERNAL NOW" by Jessica Kuzmier February 2008 edition of First Church of The Streets

     Youth is king, or at least, so says the cliche. Beauty products are sold en masse to recapture lost youth, to people as young as in their thirties. Get a nip and a tuck and you too can recapture that bod you had in college. To be told one looks young is, with several exceptions, intended to be a compliment, although realizing that every single person alive is getting older by the second seems to be conveniently forgotten along the way.

     Of course, there is a point where young is too young. Where that point is tends to be a relative marker, depending on who is speaking and what they are trying to accomplish. Many critics of the forty-six year old Senator Barack Obama claim he's too young to be the American President, though many of his contemporaries are probably trying to regain lost youth through hair replacement therapies. Sometimes, being told "you're young" or one "looks young" is intended to be an underhanded jibe, implying one is too naive, or the package looks too virginal to have any type of weight or strength. Whether motivated by a thread of jealousy on the speaker or not, age can be used against a person. Taking a stab against youth, whether actual or perceived, is one of the few demographic barbs that can be thrown in a world that pretends that we've gotten over the "big stuff" like racism. It would not be acceptable in most circles, for example, to say that Senator Obama isn't qualified for the presidency because he is black. Aiming for his age, however, is perfectly fine, although it is realistically just as prejudicial and superficial: it says nothing about what this person has accomplished with his life.

     Suffice it to say, youth is something which is considered desirable, something to be envied by those who don't have it any more so as to revile those who seem to do so. It is as though age is something to fear, something to avoid, something to pretend isn't happening even when the lines in the sand are really the ones on one's skin. Youth is something elusive and to be held on to, perhaps because it is something that slips away. One either dies early or gets old, and in either case, youth becomes nothing more than a memory for those who no longer have it.

     Youth is a promise of dreams not yet fulfilled for many. The idea of a blank page that hasn't been defiled yet has an appealing thought to it, as though things can start fresh and a new way of living can take place. It seems that to many, the older one is, the less chances one has to change the course of life. Decisions have been made, and either they can't be unmade or to do so is really an illusion: one can undo a marriage, but the history of the marriage will always remain. The idea of a young never married bride or groom sounds appealing, and admonishments are made to this younger cohort like "don't make the mistakes I made" by some "old" fifty year old, so as to preserve the idealism of intact dreams. The fact that the young never married couple is in their late twenties and have gone through two live-in relationships each before even getting to the current mate somehow becomes irrelevant. Supposedly these people are blank slates, clean sheets. They are young enough to overcome it all, simply because of youth.

     Youth doesn't get a universal pass on the red carpet, however. Scriptures claim that youth is something that is vanity, which is another way of saying that it is valueless or empty (Eccl. 11: 10). There is nothing wrong, it seems, in enjoying its experience (Eccl. 11), but the reality of its worth in weight amounts to nothing. It isn't evil, it isn't bad: it's just nothing. There is no intrinsic value to being young, any more than if one is black or born in Europe or Asia. In fact, those other things are more permanent than youth. If one is born in Europe, he always will be from there, no matter where in the world he goes later. But being young is something that slips away, having less weight than even something as impermanent as a locale.

     So then, the question becomes why there are people who put so much weight on youth. There are those who see age as something good for men and not for women; men become "wise and distinguished" while women "just get old". Although many who subscribe to this kind of thinking probably wouldn't like it, there are those who would say that this kind of thinking is nothing more than the animal kingdom surfacing. In other words, women are valuable when younger because they are fertile, while older women, meaning those as young in their fifties, are not valuable because they are now infertile. Or, so goes the mentality. Men are fertile well into old age, so despite the wrinkles and arthritis, they are viewed as aging less. Chasing youth then merely is nothing more than animalistic propagation, not a very appealing thought to those who believe that somehow humanity is a separate domain from the rest of the animal kingdom.

     One of the things that purportedly separates human beings from other animals is the ability to reason, which over time creates patterns and lessons in the cumulative knowledge gained over time. It's not to say that age automatically confers wisdom, but more logically that a person who has a certain knowledge of himself at a young age is likely to have more when he gets older. In other words, a fifty year old person doesn't necessarily know more about life than every thirty year old, but it's likely that this fifty year old person knows more about her particular life and self than she did when she was thirty. One is more likely to know personal limits, strengths, and weaknesses, and better how to direct these characteristics with age. Perhaps, then, the glory over youth has just as much with believing an ability to mold and manipulate the "youth" rather than just perceived beauty. After all, a person aware of his or her own abilities is likely to have to be negotiated with, which takes more work than mere convincing. This is similar to the parent who laments her "difficult" teenage girl, and reminisces when the daughter was young and innocent and thought the parent was god and not a mere human.

     Remembering that youth is something that passes away is important in maturity. There is no reason to be envious of so-called "good old days" when today is the day that one can do something about. Certainly youth is something to be enjoyed; it is a time where error and indiscretion is more likely to be forgiven, after all, this is a time when supposedly one doesn't know better yet. Youth is the time of the clean slate, of celebrating beginnings, and when goals are still dreams without much tarring.

     However, in all of this it is important to remember that youth isn't everything. Some math to throw into the argument: a twenty year old may be killed at twenty-eight in a car accident, having only eight years left. In the meantime, a person who is seventy years old today may fall asleep dead in his chair at the age of one hundred and two, still having thirty-two years of good life ahead of himself and outlive the twenty year old by twenty-four years. The point being is that life is important as it is lived each day, because the past is only a reference.

     The eternal now, the moment that each person finds himself or herself, is the most important moment that a person can be living, no matter what the chronological age is. The linear passage of time leaves many things in the past, never to be recounted again. Therefore, wherever a person finds himself along this road is where the most potent creation lives, youthful or not. All things, in the end, are vanity (Eccl. 11: 8), passing from this age into the creation of history and memory. The present moment is the only tangible reality that is lived, and is the most precious commodity that any person of any age can possess.