THE LEGACY OF YOUTH

"The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation." Pearl S. Buck

The curiosity and exuberance of youth can be a double-edged sword. For example, by way of a personal anecdote, the same chemistry that propels a teenage boy to rollerblade down a traffic-filled, almost vertical, canyon road, also fires the neurons of innovation in his brain enabling him to divine a method to allow his bedroom window to circumvent his home’s security system, providing him a means of silent egress and ingress at any hour of the night.

Although the vast majority of major historical inventions were created by individuals averaging 47 years of age, there are a number of significant inventions created by youngsters. Benjamin Franklin invented swim fins when he was 11. Mark Zuckerberg launched FaceBook when he was 19. Samuel Colt invented the revolver when he was 16. Mary Shelley “started” science fiction when she wrote “Frankenstein” at age 18. Frank Epperson invented the popsicle at age 11. Louis Braille created the embossed dot reading format now known as Braille when he was 15. Impressive by any standard.

During my lifetime, I have witnessed the birth and growth of the computerized world, from small capacity computers that filled entire rooms to a pocket-size device that serves as a phone, camera, calculator, gps, gaming system, and computer providing access to just about anyone and anything in the world. At the age of 19, Bill Gates formed the computer software company that would eventually become Microsoft. Steve Jobs was just 21 when he and Steve Wozniak, at age 25, started Apple Computer in Jobs’ garage.

My point is that when left to their own devices, young people can be brilliantly, frighteningly, and foolishly courageous and inventive. Unfortunately, much of this courage and creativity becomes stifled by life - lack of encouragement, experience of defeat, need to survive, pressure to conform, and loss of enthusiasm, among other reasons. Such is reality, but I think it is a shame.

Today’s poem is a bit about that.

LEGACY OF YOUTH

Youth is an incendiary time.
Constantly engaged in a fight for freedom:
For independence from parental oversight
With curfews, “clean your room,” and,
“Is your homework done?”
To become you
To shed your mother-chosen clothes
For threads
Exactly like your peers’
To become
Synchronous
Copies of each other
Unique in your sameness.

Youth is an inventive time.
Modeling yourself to create
The history made around you
’60s Vietnam marchers
With streaming down-to-there hair
Streaming, flaxen, waxen
Feet ensconced in Jesus sandals or
Those boots made for walkin’
’70s awash with Farah Fawcett hair
And the legacy of Woodstock’s
3 days of peace & music
500,000 high on hormones and
Grass and love and sex
Searching for peace
In the music and the mud.

Youth is a short time.
Thrust into the unforgiving realm of reality
Shedding shoulder-length hair,
Shredded jeans,
And hard-fought independence
To search for security
Competing with thousands just like you
Now seeking to stand out as superior
Trading that search for self for a blanket of security
Now reliant on the man and corporate culture
The adult equivalent of parental oversight
To survive
Settling
In cubicle worlds
And conforming
To belong.