The Power of Youth (Monday Moment ep. 269)
Live Inspired Podcast with John O'Leary
John O'Leary
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 6 July 2020
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Join me every Monday for a quick burst of inspiration on our Live Inspired Podcast Monday Moments segment.
During this season of full of challenges, change and the unknown it's more important than ever to recognize that some of these difficulties can be used for new birth, reconciliation and hope for the future.
Today, I share a poem written by Samuel Ullman that emphasizes the optimistic power of youth.
Youth by Samuel Ullman
Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Well, hello, my friends, and welcome to Monday Motivation with John O'Leary. |
| 0:12.2 | If you're like me, you see in the papers and in the headlines and in the news stream and in the social media stream. |
| 0:19.4 | And even in your neighborhoods and families, |
| 0:21.8 | an awful lot of negativity, a lot of divisions, a lot of concern for where we are, what's happening |
| 0:29.1 | next. And a lot of people who are talking about just canceling out this year, just getting rid of |
| 0:33.7 | this entire darn year and waking up tomorrow in 2021. But I think they're missing |
| 0:38.3 | the opportunity that remains alive and well in front of each and every one of us to ensure that |
| 0:44.6 | this change, this transformation. Some of these difficulties can be utilized for good, |
| 0:51.7 | for new birth, for reconciliation, and for the truth that the best days remain in front of us. |
| 0:57.5 | As many of you who have been following me for a while know, I wrote a book called In Odds, |
| 1:01.4 | the invitation to rediscover your child like wonder will free you to unleash inspiration, meaning, and joy. |
| 1:08.8 | And I bumped into a poem recently that speaks so beautifully about the power |
| 1:14.2 | of youth. Okay. So you can read an entire book about it, but I wanted to share with you one of my |
| 1:19.7 | favorite current poems about it right now. The poem is called youth. It's called youth. It's written by a |
| 1:25.7 | poet named Samuel Oman. It was written by him |
| 1:28.6 | near the end of his life. I think he lived to be 82 and he wrote this poem when he was 78. So it's near |
| 1:35.5 | the end of his life. And here's what the poem says. I think it was written out of his own wisdom, |
| 1:40.2 | his own experiences, but it's also something that might speak to you where you are in your |
| 1:44.1 | life today and remind you of the ability to step back into these days as a child. Okay, so here we go. |
| 1:53.0 | Youth is not a time of life. It is a state of mind. It is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips, and supple knees. |
| 2:03.3 | It's a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions. |
| 2:10.5 | It is the freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity. |
... |
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