I cam across a poem at the Art of Manliness (an awesome site that I recently stumbled across – I highly recommend it!), and wanted to share it with you. It reminded me of how important it is to keep your youthful enthusiasm, for that’s what dares one to persevere in the face of despair and discouragement – a place that I admittedly find myself way too often lately. It is entitled Youth, and was written by Samuel Ullman. Enjoy!
Youth
By Samuel Ullman
Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what’s next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.
Being that the original reviewer obviously loves this shirt since he has asked to wear it numerous times, I can fairly tell you that it washes up fantastic! We have experienced no fading or shrinking of any kind with this shirt!…
