Kabataan

“What is youth?”

This is the very first thing that I wrote about four years ago. I was barely a freshmen student in high school then. Eagerly, I was determined to join any of the school’s publication despite the lack of knowledge and experience in writing. This was the topic given to the hopeful students who want to join our school’s publication. Eventually, I was qualified in the said screening but until now, I’m not really satisfied with what I wrote four years ago.

What is youth? Is it a time, a stage of life? Is it wholly a matter of ripe cheeks, red lips or agile knees? Well my dear friends, if these are your ideas of youth, I say it's time to set them straight.

Youth is a state of mind. It is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, vigor of the emotions, and a freshness of the deep springs of life. It means a highly strung prevalence of bravery over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. This is probably why Jose Rizal said that the youth is the hope of our nation, because he knew that great ideas that can help our country will come from the youth.
(But are we really contributing? I certainly hope so.)

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. People grow old only by leaving their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. Worry, uncertainty, self disbelief, terror and hopelessness – these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust.

Whatever your years, there is in every being’s heart the love of wonder, the constant child-like appetite for what’s next, and the bliss and game of life, the daring challenge of events. You are as young as your conviction, as old as your hesitation; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your trepidation; as young as your optimism, as old as your gloom. In the central place of every heart, there is a recording hollow; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, joyfulness and bravery, so long are you young.

When the wires are all down and your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and only then are you out of the springtime of life.

Let's not waste our youth. Let's live our potentials. Let's strive for excellence!