The Currency of Youth

Youth is the currency of existence, the only thing of true, immutable value. Everything else—wealth, knowledge, even the illusion of wisdom—is a paltry consolation prize. Everyone ages, and as the clock ticks forward, the world conspires to demand gratitude for the scraps we gain along the way. People will tell you to cherish the "wisdom of experience," but would anyone with their faculties still intact choose wisdom over the vitality of youth? It’s an unsettling realization, and everyone brushes it over because the alternative is frankly, sad.

The truth is simple: most would trade every dollar, every fleeting success, every flimsy accolade accumulated over a lifetime just to be 20 years old again. The idea that this yearning is a uniquely feminine affliction is laughable. Women may be more visibly scrutinized for their age, but men are just as desperate. They wield status and wealth like shields against the creeping rot of irrelevance, compensating for their sagging skin with shiny toys and expensive distractions. Yet these efforts are no less pitiful than their poorly concealed receding hairline. Aging is democracy’s great equalizer, though no one wants to admit that they’re voting for the same bleak outcome.

The farce extends beyond gender, seeping into every corner of life. We pretend age brings dignity, but deep down, we all know the truth: the world is unapologetically youth-centric, as it should be. This truth reveals itself in emergencies. When a building burns, we save the children first. Not the CEOs, not the lawyers, not the artists who have "contributed to society." We save the young because they carry the raw material of existence - the flesh that keep the species alive. We know instinctively what we spend our lives trying to deny: youth is the only real currency.

There’s a reason it’s called a mid-life crisis, not a teenage crisis.

The cult of youth is not just a societal quirk, it’s an evolutionary imperative. Youth equals fertility, vitality, survival of the species. It’s primal, hardwired into us. No one escapes this calculus, no matter how enlightened they claim to be. But this instinct doesn’t have to become a prison.

And yet, I’ve met 25-year-olds who are spiritually middle-aged, their imaginations drained, their ideals surrendered. They shuffle through their day to day with the resignation of people twice their age, having already compromised their dreams, principles, even the audacity to demand more. You can almost hear the eulogies being written in their heads, small deaths of identity and ambition carried out with bureaucratic efficiency. They’ve grown up too fast, and for what? A steady pay-check? A rented apartment that barely feels like theirs? A vague sense of stability that deadens their spirit?

What keeps the spirit youthful is not clinging to the past or denying the reality of aging but refusing to let the world dictate what life should look like at a certain age. You don’t have to grow up in the way people mean it: surrendering your dreams, curiosity, and the spark that makes life worth living. The people who tell you to grow up are often the same ones who lament the loss of their own youth, trapped in the contradictions of their own choices.

This is why we prize the exceptions: the few who resist the slow degradation of their souls. They refuse to compromise on who they are, what they believe, or how they choose to live. These are the ones who stay young. Reject the voices that demand you “grow up.” They only want you to join them in their misery, to validate their choices, to make their slow death feel less lonely. And when they finally admit that “youth is wasted on the young”, you’ll know it’s coming from a place of envy.

It’s refreshing when you come across those who’ve refused the transaction. Look at the old skaters, those sun-weathered misfits who understood this intrinsically: you don't actually have to “grow up”. Not in the way that’s expected of you. These men keep their hair, their vitality, their essential nature intact well into their later years. Not because they found some miracle fountain, but because they never traded their souls in the first place.

Youth isn’t wasted on the young; it’s wasted on those who forget how to fight for it. It’s wasted on those who equate growing older with growing duller, those who give in to compromise after compromise until there’s nothing left of their original selves.

There is no tragedy in getting older, but there is in surrendering piece by piece, trading curiosity for comfort, conviction for compromise, fire for fatigue.

Life isn’t a fairytale; the body will decay, no matter how fiercely the spirit burns. The skaters’ bodies will eventually give out. But the memory of their refusal to submit, their defiance in the face of time, will remain. And that’s the only immortality that matters: never letting the world tell you it’s time to fade away.

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