Enjoy Youth While You’re Young

On Tuesday, August 16, my Senior daughter posted this status on her Facebook, “Wake up at 5:30, leave my house at 6:45, school from 7:20 to 3:00, cheerleading after school until 7 or 8, homework, study, eat, shower, sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat Monday-Friday.” An adult friend of my daughter replied, “That’s a good gig girl!!! It will go fast then you will have to throw bills in the mix!!” A few minutes later my wife replied, “That’s what I keep telling her!! This is the Best of the Best!! Enjoy it :)”

Brandi's Cheerleading Buds

So, this begs the question. Why is youth wasted on the Young? I believe it comes down to the difference between intelligence and wisdom.  Teenagers can be smart but they are not wise.  We learn wisdom by living through our failures and successes.  Mainly our failures. Those big life lessons.  We all can look back and see where we wasted time as kid or didn’t work hard enough towards our goals.  We all should’ve studied a little more and applied ourselves a little harder.  The frustrating part is that we see our kids making the same mistakes that our parents told us that we were making.

Wisdom isn’t in a text-book. You can’t study for a wisdom test. Wisdom isn’t something achieved on your own.  You have a lot of help along the way.  I had one of my assistant baseball coaches tell me during a baseball game, “Earl, I know you’re frustrated that the kids do not understand where you’re coming from, but remember, you are looking through the wisdom of 42-year old eyes. Your 14 and 15-year old players don’t see the same thing you see.”  And, he is exactly right.

To better understand where I’m coming from, you do not have look any further than a 25 cent coin, the Georgia Quarter Dollar.  If you look on the back of the Georgia Quarter Dollar, it has the seal of the great state of Georgia. Emblazoned on the Georgia seal, it says, “Wisdom, Justice, and Moderation.” I said it earlier, wisdom is more important than intelligence. Justice does not mean punishing the guilty, but to give people a chance, a fair-shake to live freely, gain wisdom, and make mistakes.  Moderation means to balance it all to benefit all.  Or, to avoid extremism.  In other words, too much of anything is a bad thing.

My advice to the young is what Theodore Roosevelt said, “Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.”