Youth versus ExperienceWhat would it be like to couple a youthful body with the wisdom of age? It is largely the subject of fiction movie and books, partially because a serious look at the question would be difficult. Still, everyone seems to be wishing for that imaginary combination whenever they say Youth is wasted on the young.My short response to that statement would be: I think not. Youth is exactly where it needs to be; age as well. But, what benefits attach to youth?Id include a fresh, eager perspective on things; enthusiasm and boundless energy; and a great capacity for getting excited (in every sense). Remember the enkindling experience of a new great song or a new love? You are likely to hear more wonderful music over time, and probably have later loves, but they dont quite feel the same to you if you are mature when they happen.Add to the period of lifes early gifts an openness to new experience, intellectual flexibility and the relative ease of molding yourself into a new shape; quickness of mind and body; great beauty and strength. Finally, youth is more innocent and finds it easier to trust, not yet having been so fooled by life and the people in it to assume that appearances are always the real thing.On the down side, there is the self-consciousness that particularly afflicts the young and can make it painful at times. Competing with others for attention in all sorts of ways which includes competition for better appearance in school or college, for good grades and to try to be best at everything, is just the part of growing up.We tend to learn more from pain than pleasure. Thus, early life the period in which we learn the most is a painful time, of necessity. The School of Hard Knocks doesnt award you a diploma, but perhaps it should.Most of us do not enjoy the youthful stress connected with not knowing a thing and having to learn large quantities of procedures, skills, and information rapidly. It is no fun being behind all the bigger, older, and more learned competitors and authorities. But this gives way to a more gradual less all at once process of learning as one ages. Routines are acquired. Practice makes perfect. One discovers the tricks of the trade, even though baseball great Vernon Law warned that Some people are so busy learning the tricks of the trade that they never learn the trade.Still, experience does tend to make lots of things easier, so that each day is not quite as challenging as it was when we were growing up. The experience and the knowledge that comes with age serves to increase ones feeling of self-confidence and security; and perhaps even allowing for less self-consciousness.

The young usually have a greater sense of possibility than the mature. It is easier for them to turn around, retrace steps, and start over. They are usually less encumbered by things like spouses and children, mortgages and other debts. The fresh mind is more comfortable with change than the stodgy and stuck older person, as anyone who has looked at the effect of technological advances on these two groups. Indeed, one danger of aging is to gradually feel more alienated from the world in which you live, partly because it is no longer the world you knew.What is more, the sense of time passing is different at different ages of life; the mature can feel it passing with a speed that young cannot, even though the clock is the same for both.Mature loves, perhaps less urgent biological necessity, having to do with knowing that nothing lasts forever, a feeling that is often hard for a young person to fully grasp, even though he knows it to be true intellectually.In real maturity there is a steadiness and calm: youve seen worse before, youve lived through a lot; so you know that not everything is a matter of life and death. Or to quote a famous basketball coachs advice to his young players: If every game is a matter of life and death, youre going to have a problem. Youre going to die a lot. And so the mature person dies less often than his youthful counterpart and is at least a little better at taking on difficult challenges. The man with seniority no longer sweats so much of the small stuff.Revolution is not constricted to any particular age. However the older man is no longer that person who is capable of the kind of energy and passion and idealism that fuel most revolutionaries. Life finds him less intense, not so easily worked up. We are stuck with who we are, but there is a lesson in this, I think. No, it is not to spend the rest of your time regretting what you had and lost; or never had and wishing you could go back and try again, armed with all that time has taught you. Rather, the lesson is in living life fully at whatever age you are, because, in part, you will never be that particular version of yourself again. We need to stumble to learn, as we do particularly in our youth; and we need the losses that come with experience in order to appreciate what we have.