Learn from the youth – despite vanity and insecurity

TUESDAY, 27 SEPTEMBER 2011

My whole adult life I’ve been thinking of myself as a young man – after all, I don’t know what it’s like to be old. But then one day you’re confronted with the realisation that there are other young men as much as twenty years younger than you.

“Twenty years!” you cry out. “Twenty years?!”

And to top it all of you have to remind yourself that you can learn something from these youngsters any day of the week – that a guy of 20 or 25 can also sit on a rock for an hour or so and then rise with a piece of wisdom or good advice ready to share with the nearest bystander.

At the end of the day it’s just vanity, and pathological insecurity about your own value that makes you want to hold on to time, that makes you panic when you think of time slipping through your fingers day after day – like it does through everyone’s fingers.

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