Have you ever thought that when we are young, we are so filled with trying to make it high in the world, to pass our exams, getting a good job, then working hard to get the next promotion and a better designation, that we really don’t have time to look around, to laugh, to appreciate, to enjoy?
Years ago, a showing of Pablo Picasso’s works was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Nearly a thousand of Picasso’s works were displayed in chronological order, beginning when he was a very young boy.
The early works were traditional landscapes and still-lifes. Then, as the artist advanced in age, brilliant colors began to emerge, and the still-lifes were no longer very still. Finally, of course, the works turned into the kind of bold, zesty abstractions for which Picasso is best known.
One art critic who saw the show recalled that once, when Picasso was eighty-five, he was asked the reason his earlier works were so solemn and his later works so ecstatic and exciting.
“How do you explain it?” asked the interviewer.
“Easily,” Picasso responded, his eyes sparkling. “It takes a long time to become young!”
Yes it takes a long time to become young.
Well there’s two lessons for us here; one that when we are actually young, and have the health and youth to enjoy many of what life gives us, we don’t. We don’t spend enjoyable times with our young family because we are so busy trying to make a living.
We don’t visit far off places, and exotic destinations when we are in the pink of health, when we have the strength to climb Everest, because we are concentrating on other different paper mountains of files in the office; and so, we never see the splendid view from atop a real mountain.
Maybe it’s time you youngsters made time.
The second lesson is for people who are older like me, that just like Picasso who said that it took him time to become young; we are now young!
Yes, we have been solemn as we went through life, and our view of the world was solemn as responsibilities and anxieties gave no time for joy and laughter: But now we have time to laugh, to look around and see the beauty we missed before.
Now enjoy life, and despite stiff limbs and sometimes an aching back, in spite of diabetes or a palpitating heart, or complaining about a common cold, use your time to enjoy moments, or hours of happiness that are available; we owe it to ourselves.
So today, here’s a message for both the old and the young; get young..!
Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and author. He blogs at www.bobsbanter.com and can be reached at bobsbanter@gmail.com
