> So, if you're in my boat, or you were, tell me:
> are these the best years?

I don't think so, but I wouldn't put them down, either. The interesting thing about the way the human mind works, is it tends to smooth out complexities. Extremes are dulled, and the norm is glorified. The passing of time brings about a detachment of emotions, but an increase in sentiment.

When I look back at my teenage years, I remember a lot of things, some good, some bad. Some things I remember with the same sort of perspective I once had; other things I look back upon and fail to recognize as me. Ten years from now, should you happen across this post then, it would probably catch your interest, and you'll examine your words very intently, trying to recreate in your mind what you were feeling when you wrote them. And although your efforts will be met with a measure of success, they'll require a great deal of effort, and you may look like a stranger to yourself, even though, if you turn out anything like me, the feeling of sentiment for your past will be strong.

What do I remember from my teenage years? Spending lunch hours and breaks between classes furiously scribbling out short stories in my notebooks, stories I still cherish with great sentiment to this day, though now part of me chuckles at some of the off the wall plot points in the same manner I might laugh at a bad movie today. At times I wonder what the heck I was thinking, and at others, I remember quite well and wish my creative energies were as unleashed from perfectionism as they once were, though I always sought artistic goals more lofty than I could ever attain.

I remember as a kid going outside and playing with my friends, and I revel in the thought that I could pull myself away from all else in life -- all restraint, all responsibility -- and have fun with a kind of purity I can't today. As a teenager, I was still able to do the same thing; we just didn't call it playing.

But I also remember the dreariness of plugging through homework, before learning became a fascination -- and I had a greater fascination with learning, actually, than the vast majority of my peers. I remember a lack of freedom I didn't look upon as such at the time, not knowing any different; looking back, I don't know how I stood it, for though I may not have known what it would be like living on my own, the subconscious agitation of lacking that lifestyle was surely there. But I have to think harder to remember the downside of growing up. I have to force myself to keep my feet on the ground and be objective. The path of least resistance is to revel in the sentimentality of a glorified past. After all, whatever disadvantages there may have been, there is simply no replacement for -- and no way to convey to anyone else -- the personal excitement there is in recalling something experienced at a very young age -- the younger, the more special. (A year ago, perhaps, my then-fiancee and I visited the town she grew up in, and I watched her rediscover the place of her youth with a kind of rapt fascination. She, as I would be, was excitedly rediscovering the simplest of things, the things that seem so important to children. I knew she could never fully convey, nor I fully understand, the way she looked upon these things of her childhood, but I knew the nature of what was happening and was glad that it was.)

What do I think are the "best years" of my life? I don't think there is such a thing. Lives are complex at any stage; to boil them down and rank them is a fruitless task. It trivializes everything that makes you you, and it's so hopelessly dependent on the perspective of where you are now -- the current stage of your life which will itself be subject to such examination years later -- that it couldn't possibly be anything but the whim of the moment. Regardless of how you feel about your life now, in ten years or even less, you'll recollect something fondly about it that you take for granted now. And you may, too, with a little more effort, recollect something you can't imagine you ever weathered. What is dear to you now will probably stay that way, but your passions will most assuredly evolve in some way you probably won't be able to predict.

Maturity is a sword and an olive branch, wrapped up into one. You'll lose what you later look back upon as a kind of pure innocence; but there will be new rewards, too, of a kind you can't foresee, that come from the fulfillment of responsibilities you don't now have and, yes, the freedom you now crave.

All this, and I'm a scant 25. I'm barely started. In another ten years, I'll look back on this post and...well, who knows what I'll think? In 2009, if I happen to remember this, I'll read it again and tell you.