YOUTH IS A BLUNDER, MANHOOD A STRUGGLE, OLD AGE A REGRET
The quote above by Benjamin Disraeli sums up life which could be a fascinating delight for some or a puzzling conundrum for others. However, what is to be best understood as the meaning of life is that in life, joy is inextricably mixed with sorrow, success with failure, tranquility with turmoil and dreams with reality. When a child takes the first initial steps into life, the child feels delighted and amazed to feel the beauty and profundity of this creation. He reflects the divinity of his childhood innocence enjoys the pranks of his adolescence, soars high in the dreamy realm of his youth, returns to the real plane of his manhood, approaches near his consummation, when he shakes his hoary and wistful head, ponders and reflects and then is frigidly silent. But life still remains a baffling philosophy, springing from eternal breath and culminating in inevitable death-” the last of life for which the first was made”.
‘Human Seasons’ and ‘River of Life’ seem to be favourite metaphors with poets. While they all have reveled in lusty spring and felt an attraction for the impetuous flow, they have been equally concerned with the torrid summer and frosty winter, so have the staid philosophers been. In fact, each one of us, whether he possesses a poetic soul or philosophic mind or none of these’ complexities’, has been inspired and motivated by the divine infancy and sanguine youth, has been vexed with the tremors and tribulations of manhood and shattered and disillusioned with the dotage. We all experience the universal delight and disgust. What we forget is the fact that it is improper to segregate life in quarters; it is a coherent whole, to be lived in its fullness.
It is in our youth that we learn to admire beauty around us. It is when love, passion, dreams and ideals sprout and blossom in our hearts. The bold lovers, indifferent to the wrinkled brows, remain lost in each other’s embrace and their world gets converged to each other’s eyes. The idealism of young Shelley, the rebellious spirit of young Byron, the sensitive heart of romantic Keats, the thirst for knowledge of Dr.Faustus and the lovely moral nature of Hamlet, all ensnare and inspire boys and girls and embody their zeal, dreams, faith and ideals. The society, with its sober norms, strives to regulate their uncontrollable flight. The young see these mores as deliberate means to curb their individualities. Most of us, in our youth, see society not as our benefactor but as our exploiter. It is not that all of us are moved by a spirit of reform. But all of us desire to exist as individuals, with no social control regulating our passionate quest for delight or any moral thought restraining us from pursuing our unconventional aims and ideals.
Youth is a blunder! What is it that makes the bold and adventurous, lofty and hopeful youth a striking expression of blunders? Simple-In dreaming and enjoying we forget our earthly existence, we ignore the limits, wish to transgress them and forget altogether that youth is not the only period of our existence.
Youth becomes a blunder when we fail to realize what is more concrete and important to us. The precious time that could be utilized in realizing noble ideals is wasted on drunken brawls, aimless loitering, and monetary excitements and in the din and clamour of discotheques. Instead of’ concretizing our reasonable ambitions, we tend to remain engrossed in illusions. Illusions are bound to break and so is the breaking of an individual who nurtures them. Youth is the phase which shapes the future course of our life. Mistakes are unavoidable at this point, for it is experience which perfects our thinking.
To understand the struggle of manhood, we must look at our parents, whose actions may appear to us quite contradictory to our own beliefs. We often dismiss their approach to life as rigid, dull and unromantic. Though the shades may change according to the changing times yet the essential character of an age remains the same. Then how could they adapt themselves so easily to such a drastic change- from romance and adventure to restraint and struggle! Very often, we are moved to see our fathers struggling hard so that they may provide us with the best of education and upbringing. How poignant is our mother’s plight that burn their dreams and desires in the hearth?
Old age is, in Keats metaphor, the winter of human life, to remind man of his mortal nature. An individual, after enjoying the glorious youth and tumultuous manhood, reaches that stage of his life from where he may have glimpses of his dusk. Death is the ultimate reality of life. The stage of old age, whether glorious or miserable, depends on how an individual accepts and realizes this reality. He who regards the last phase of his life as the most precious opportunity to dedicate his remaining breath to the service of mankind enjoys the simple joys and gleams with positive vision. But he, who laments at what he has lost, what he has failed to achieve, how much he has suffered, how gruesome and cruel life has been and what a miserable wretch he has been reduced to, makes his old age the most horrible, hollow and painful period of his life. Perceptions and attitudes decide the course and shape of life. It depends on us, whether we wish to find “strength in what remains behind” or languish in regretting at what life has robbed us of.
Old age is regret. This can never be the whole truth. It is true that people feel despair and grief more frequently and more conspicuously in their old age. The sense of estrangement and deprivation – deprivation of sensual pleasures, bodily strength and manly desires- fill the old soul with a crushing dole. One cannot say how true is the fact that people crave for more sensual pleasures as and when they grow old. But the poet Yeats felt disgusted with his old age, for while he aspired to know the spirit, he did not wish to lose the delights of the body. He called an aged man a “paltry thing” – his restless heart” sick with desire, fastened to a dying animal”.
Disgust was obvious. So does one feel when one looks into one’s past to analyze one’s actions and achievements- all that one has done, all that is accomplished, all that could not be accomplished and all that could have been accomplished. Undeniably, one tends to be reflective in one’s ripe years. One loves to brood on one’s state in solitude. The merriment of life no longer regales the old and forlorn hearts. The whole life has been spent in seeing and fulfilling dreams, in yearning for and satisfying desires. The long, arduous struggle has now come to an end, to culminate either in dignified peace and contentment or morbid misery,
There is ample truth in Benjamin Disraeli’s comment: “Youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle and old age, regret”. But it is not infallible. If youth is a blunder, it is also the most fertile ground to sow and grow one’s dreams and talents. And one should not forget that most of the creative work, wonders, art, achievements and inventions have been realized by the youth. It would be improper to consider it a blunder. In a zeal for fresh air, some windows are bound to get smashed, as Lowell says it all in one of his essays: “Manhood is, doubtless, a struggle. But how didactic, meaningful, concrete and rewarding the struggle is! Old Age, a regret? No”. It is the perfection of life. To some, the whole life may appear to be a blunder, a struggle and regret; theirs is a sick attitude. The players on the world’s stage play their destined parts and silently depart, burying and burning all their struggle, regrets and blunders. What endures is how well they have lived and understood LIFE!!