Painfully Young

I have a friend who is painfully young. It's not a character flaw, it's just a temporary condition. Any adult can remember what it's like to be 20-something and think you have a handle on the way the world works, on the way relationships work, on the way society and politics work. Then you wake up one day and you're 35 and you realize you had it all wrong. And that's okay. When you are 15 or 25 you're operating with the facts you know, with the world you've experienced, with the things you've been told. And you don't know that you don't know the half of it. Liberals have babies and Moms become Democrats who want those babies taken care of and Dads become Republicans who want to make sure their kids can take care of themselves. Protesters become men and women of action who discover how to make real change. You listen more than you speak. And you learn more than you teach. And hopefully you wake up at 50 and discover you understand it all the more, and at 70 with a wisdom of those years. It's a shame that 25-year-olds have the energy to run the world, but 80-year-olds are the ones who really understand it.

So, at 41, I am pained occasionally by how young this friend is, both amused and wincing at the things they say. (And thankful, that at 20 I was not using email or Facebook). And I am aware how painfully young my Grandmother would think the things I think are, how naive my world view is, how I have so much to learn about people. I know that she would understand that I am still learning.