A Favorite of General Douglas MacArthur , the Post war  American Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Occupied japan , The poem below  instills a sense of agility , as is the point that , yes , youth is a state of mind , it is the way we perceive our self as, that we make of our self  to be eventually . It’s all in the mind .

“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.

     I had the opportunity of coming across the wonderful and inspiring picture when a colleague of mine showed his blog and pointed to this old man ( i couldn’t get his name from the vast swathes of the web though ! ), who I say is younger than me and all of us, as he is much younger at his heart, he truly is young !!