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I’ve heard this sentiment from many clients over the years and have, of late, experienced it myself. “Was I ever really young?” is not simply an old person’s lament nor a complaint about time passing too quickly. At heart, it’s a question about the present and future.
Youth is supposed to be expansive, open, shaped more by wonder than necessity. Yet for many, youth is constricted and filled with premature awareness — of conflict, responsibility, fear, loss, or shame. For many, childhood was less a time of innocence than adaptation. Some children learn very early to read moods, anticipate danger, or carry adult burdens. They may have memories of playing and laughter, but those feel peripheral, more like a movie they saw than recollections of lived experience. Their recollections are filled with vigilance or coping tactics; recalled positive experiences feel like brief respites from the burdens of life and stress.
Youth is not merely a period of life, but a time marked by openness and curiosity. In that sense, it is never lost. What seemed to be missing earlier in life can be discovered later, through conscious choice. We can choose to cultivate curiosity, creativity, imagination, and enjoyment.
“Was I ever really young?” matters less as a verdict on the past than as a guide for the present and future. If youth was supplanted, interrupted, or deferred, the task is not to resurrect it as it should have been in the past, but to allow its essential qualities to emerge now: be open, engaged, and fully alive to the possibilities of being.
We can do in adulthood what we could not easily do in youth: create meaning and purpose. Those are generative qualities that require lived experience rather than youthful speculation. Mental focus enhances meaning, purpose, curiosity, openness, and engagement.
Moral Compass
A moral compass is an internalized sense of what is right and wrong, with motivation to act accordingly. The foundation of a moral compass is the belief that care is right and harm is wrong. In youth, we had a rudimentary moral compass, skewed toward comfort, fun, and the moral models of parents, peers, and the media. As such, it was replete with contradictions.
Without a vital moral compass and a sense of basic humanity, we’ll almost certainly experience anxiety or depression. We’re likely to abuse substances or other people or try to replace an internal sense of right and wrong with ideology. Basic humanity and moral character diminish in ideology.
A moral compass has both positive and negative reinforcers. The former is the sense of well-being that typically accompanies doing what we sincerely believe to be the right thing. The latter is internal guilt when hidden and shame when exposed. Unfortunately, common ways of coping with guilt and shame can obscure the moral compass in a fog of inflated ego, anger, and resentment. Unsurprisingly, these also create the illusion that we were never really young.
The cliche that youth is a state of mind is true only in a shallow sense. We feel younger and more optimistic when we use a solid moral compass to guide our behavior now and in the future.
