It was the early 1960’s and with my new license, I was driving our white De Soto on Robertson Boulevard, toward town. All the windows were down, the antennas on the tail fins were up, and the radio was blaring rock and roll. As the palm trees blew by I savored the taste of adult independence, at least for the few minutes it took to make the trip. Instinctively I knew that it was a unique and special time of life. I somehow knew, too, that it would be fleeting. What I didn’t know was something that remained a secret until I was much older.
Because of that secret, I think I’ll issue a warning to anyone under the age of 18. You’ve heard it before and it probably won’t mean any more to you now than it did to any of us then, but I’m going to repeat it, anyway. Don't be in a hurry to grow up.
But that's not the secret . . .
For some reason, Nature often plants in the young mind an inability to recognize reality when it sees it, so many of you don’t see the struggles your parents and other adults are enduring. I know I didn’t, and it probably wouldn’t have mattered if I had, because youth also assumes it will not make the same mistakes.
Some people have ghastly childhoods and would never want to return to those years no matter what, but the majority eventually experience a certain quirk of Nature, at which point they learn, "The Secret." It is simply that, when you're young, you think growing up will make you free, but when you’re older, you think you were only truly free during childhood. As the years of responsibility and self-sufficiency take their toll, nostalgia can turn childhood into a memory that grows fonder with each year that removes us from it.
If you aren’t careful, everything will eventually invert, and you will start looking backward with longing instead of looking forward with hope. You can’t control where you are in your lifespan and the simple truth is, your life is never more, nor less, than today. So if you’re going to revere one time of life as special, make it the one you’re in.
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