Wednesday, March 15, 2017 // The Statement
8B
If at some point we all succumb
For goodness sake, let us be young.
‘Cause time gets harder to outrun,
And I’m nobody, I’m not done.
-The Vaccines
I respect youth. I value it, fight it, fear it. Having completed only my first year of college, I’ve not been responsible for a career, a home, another person. I’ve
never worried about angering a boss for fear of losing my job and my income. I’ve never worried about losing my home, failing my children. The only things I am
responsible for at this stage in life is myself and my own future.
I possess vitality and exuberance (when I get enough sleep). I have the energy to go to class, then the gym, then to parties. I can stay awake through the night to
write an essay. I can drink enough to drown most women of my stature and still function pretty well. I can do this for a few days in a row and still enjoy it. I have
the opportunity to learn about anything — Buddhism, cells, the stock market. There are so many professors who want to teach me how to write or how to conduct
research. I revel in the company of my friends, hoping that nights with them will be eternal, that naïve political debates and deep concern for the future of our
civilization will never wilt. I desperately hope that I will always feel anger, nervousness, joy, and love as powerfully as I do now — love for friends, family, strangers.
That I will continue to wake up most days with excitement.
And yet, I crave maturation. There sits within me a deep-rooted desire to fall in love. Instead of appreciating my independence and self-sufficiency — my
opportunity to play by my own rules, to not worry about someone else’s reactions to my personality and choice — I search desperately for love. And while I search as
if love would deliver me from suffering, I live a paradox. In the darkest recesses of my mind, I don’t resent this or any suffering. It will help me grow. And grow up.
Living in an apartment, I’ve started to understand what it’s like to have my own place. While the decision to live off campus was partly compelled by a desire to live
with friends far away from security, I also wanted to learn to pay electric bills, cook my own meals, and clean my own house. I want to be responsible for something
larger. I wanted to cultivate the feeling of being home away from my parents, and now I wonder what it would be like in a house where my friends are replaced by
my children. I look forward to rising up a branch on the family tree (when / if I’m ready) and being shrouded in its foliage rather than hanging off of the lowest limb.
Again, I crave maturation. As a young person, I wish that my optimism would be appreciated rather than mocked. I wish that my thoughts and opinions would be
taken seriously- that I would be respected for what experience I have and accepted for that which I do not.
Another paradox — I fear age. I fear that I will not be able to do all the things I want to do, say the things I want to say. There are so many people that I want to
befriend, to love, and simply not enough time to do it all. I fear losing my optimism and my energy. I forever want to be able to socialize with my friends, get to know
them more deeply, meet strangers. What happens when I start to discuss the weather with others more than I discuss life? What kind of identity will I possess then?
I fear that age will change me in unnatural ways, that I will lose myself — this self that I have worked so hard to cultivate and to love. I beg you — youth, age, be
gentle with me.
God Bless America
PHOTO BY BHARAT CHOPRA, LSA Freshman
Youth
BY LAUREN RANUCCI-WEISS, LSA Sophomore