I came across a stash of old slide photographs recently and I have been trying to preserve them digitally. This one, like yesterday’s, was taken of me, horror of horrors, in those halcyon days when everything and anything seemed possible and when the World itself seemed to be changing all around me. Well, it didn’t change as much as I hoped but I was still lucky enough to live through some very exciting times that matched my probably rather adolescent enthusiasms and passions. Strange then that I don’t feel that I’ve changed that much since then – in my head and heart at least even if the passage of time has been unkinder to all my other less adolescent bits. I haven’t seen this old photograph since around the time it was taken so it came as a vivid reminder of those days when I, along with a lot of other young idealists, were listening to a song called All You Need Is Love. Odd though it may seem and wiser as I may have become, I still go along with those sentiments and whenever I listen to it, a bit of that thrill returns.
Your comments resonate with a conversations I had with two friends over an exceedingly long pub lunch yesterday. With me were a lady who, when I was in the nursery class of the Infants' School, was a young trainee nurse who poured cod-liver oil and orange juice into my mouth each morning and was responsible for my first agreeing to join Sunday School,and also a much younger priest whom we both know and who, on the face of it, can sometimes appear silly and immature and yet, from experiences of his own life, can be immensely perceptive, helpful and pastorally supportive and encouraging. As Ecclesiates noted in his writings, there is nothing new under the sun. I suppose we have all experienced youthful enthusiasm, excitement and a feeling that we can do things better than those before us and make the world a better and more enjoyable place. What came out in conversation yesterday is that we all also have had to deal with sadness, unfulfilled ambition and situations we would have preferred to have avoided. On the other hand without those apparently negative things we wouldn't be who we are today, wouldn't be so able to help others now and would be less able to empathise with the problems of others. Yes, I dearly wish I could have known 30 or 40 years ago what I know now so that I could have done things better but I, for one, find being older infinitely more enjoyable and rewarding than being young but, as has been said many times – including by me and certainly by my friend Mary yesterday – I was never young because I had old parents and no siblings.
Thanks for that Malcolm – maybe it's time for some of those things that are loosely included in the word "young" – it's never too late.