When I can look life in the eyes, grown calm and very coldly wise, life will have given me the truth, and taken in exchange - my youth.
-Sara Teasdale
i think i took this the wrong way… unless its supposed to have 2 meanings…
does she mean it takes long to develop into being wise…?
and the time your not wise is just a waste…
i beleive myself to be wise… an i am 15 years old… i see noone wise my age who are wise… jus some quite diligent and others totally lost… an i for some reason dont let myself have the fun my friends have… i was a prevent myself from being youthful, just invest in the smarter decisions (though i am not always virtuous- but theres a limit)
and i see myself as smarter than even many adults who try to act youthful…
Ah, a budding philosopher! Yes, there are people who are highly intelligent simpletons and others who are not so intelligent simpletons, but then there are the wise simpletons like you and me. People here should be giving you a break, you are only trying to be honest. But as far as investing in the smarter decisions, are they really the smarter ones? They may be the more intellectual response, the less animal response, but sitting out of the fun because you can already forsee regretting your actions is not always the smarter response. I did some of that myself and when you get older you will regret not regretting your actions.
Just because having fun requires no intelligence does not make it a dumb thing to do.
And as for adults ‘acting’ youthful, they are the youthful acting kids +20 odd years. That poetic little snippet you quoted would have to be referring to wisdom earnt through the experience of time taking away physical youth, not mental ‘youthiness’.
So is everyone else! Noone’s telling you off, just trying to make you a wiser 15 year old.
There are times, picked completely in a random selection, when I get stricken in the face as by a mighty fuller by the robust impression that I am nothing less than one hell of a smart guy, with nothing but good things to expect from the future.
Luckily, this kind of episode happens not very often - and when it does, it usually withstands for just about a few minutes, until I resume my reading of some great writer or philosopher and realise in a dismal awakening that I may never be capable of conceiving something of at least equal valour.
You see, this gallous feeling has little or nothing to do with my actual intelligence or perspectives, insomuch as it involves my expectations from life and a series of random standards I have set myself. Which, as it happens, are high.
I reckon what Sara is trying to put across is that there is nothing super in being young and qualmish, unless if maybe you take “superfluous” and “supercilious” as superlatives. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and one has to go through a heap more epidermal volcanic warfare before he may vail his hat and recommend himself as Mr Cold Wisdom. Expectedly, life is big business.
