It’s time for Five Minute Friday again. Five Minute Friday is an inter-blog event hosted by The Gypsy Mama. The idea is five minutes of writing for the sheer joy of writing. Here’s the rules:
1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Get a little crazy with encouragement for the five minuter who linked up before you.
Today’s topic is “Age.”
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I don’t think very much about age. Perhaps it’s because I’m very young and haven’t a lot of age to think about. But no, I don’t think that’s it. Because the very young are all too often concerned with age and being “grown-up” and hoping that others won’t perceive them as a child. I hope I’m past that now.
Maybe the reason I don’t think about it very often is that most of the people in my life – from my wife to my best friends – are either a few or several years older than myself. Does spending time with older people make you, well, older?
C.S Lewis always drew a distinct line between age and maturity. Children, he would say, are the only people who are very concerned about seeming grown-up. True adults are too busy being mature to wonder whether or not people think they are mature. So my hope is that as a 21-year-old going on 22, I will be more focused on the doing of courageous things than in how I am perceived by others. And I hope that I will not replace childlike joy for false maturity.
As Paul said, “Let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example to the believers…” And they tell me Timothy was 40. I guess to some extent you are always a “youngster.”
The Gentleman Adventurer 
Posted on August 26, 2011 by richardrohlin
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