Some excerpts:
These youngsters shake me out of my cynicism too. They’re willing to give. Not money, but time. Which, if you think it over, is in the truest sense giving of oneself. They believe. In causes, in people. And in the future. After all these years of seeing the seamier side of life, it’s refreshing to see these young people forego their own pleasures. To teach poor children, to clean public spaces, to help with their own blood. I admire their energy, their selflessness. And I am humbled.
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Nor am I suggesting that senior citizens (a term used by the young, I believe, to refer to any person over the age of 25) are devoid of value. We oldies get a lot done too. I’m proud to have contemporaries who still have mental flexibility, tolerance, energy and compassion. These qualities are not the prerogative of youth. Or perhaps they are. Perhaps youth is defined not by a figure but the very possession of these qualities. And the country of old men exists only in the mind.
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