Old people tend to tell young people they’re too idealistic.
And young people tend to disregard their elders as burned out.
There’s some truth here.
Old people (and I include myself in this wisdom-rich population) are, indeed, pretty burned out. How can we not be?
Life is hard.
There’s a lot of goal-setting. And then, of course, achieving those goals. And not achieving them. Both take work.
Energy isn’t just there automatically. It has to be created.
After decades of alchemy, our hands and minds get tired. It’s particularly disheartening when we feel like we’re doing all this work and conjuring the same thing all over again.
Oh, and once we see the dead-ends — that there really are dead-ends — that’s a hard moment.
Perhaps that’s the disconnect.
Between the old and the young.
We’ve climbed through the thickets and we’ve seen the dead-ends.
And they, well, they’ve only just begun to feel the sun.
The truth is, in our cynicsm there is jealousy and a bit of fear.
Jealousy that they will feel the sun more easily and fear that they might find our path but not the dead end.