Youth is lingering. No, I am not using the italicized word as an adjective.

I am
using it as the fulcrum of meaning on which the whole sentence, and indeed this
whole scrap of rambling, is hoisted. I am using it as a noun as a robust named
entity, and as the other end of the tunnel that begins with the word youth.
To be young is to linger over things in wonderment. To stay young, youd have to
keep falling through the rabbit-hole forever. Youth is to prod and fluster that
which makes you curious, and unfortunately, youth also means to be perpetually
curious. I have seen babies nibble away at huge chunks of time with their barren
gums, their attention hooked and whetted by some bauble or another. I have
grown to appreciate this naked stare of curiosity - untarnished as it still is by any
prejudice or predisposition towards forming cutting judgements and I have
grown to love fledglings who are only just beginning to discover the treasures of
their own world.
Youth is thinking deeply about things, caring intensely and weighing one thing
against the other carefully. Youth is getting caught up in your own thoughts, and
setting off on journeys into your own self, because to be young also means to be
new and undiscovered, inside and out, now and always.
And being young, alas, also means being distracted, constantly. Distracted by the
sheer number of novelties that the world keeps throwing at us, and frustrated
too, like a child with its greedy hand stuck down the throat of a jar full of candies.
The adult thing is to loosen your grip and let some of them trickle out. The
youthful thing would be to smash the jar, devour all the forbidden savouries, and
then go around looking for more.
Youth is also being aware. Aware of things in relation to you, of things in relation
to one another, and then, of things in general. But most of all, it is the act of
turning things around in your head, over and over again because there are just
so many nooks and crannies to the world, and a floundering newborn will have to
bump against a dozen of its jutting cornices before constructing even a
semblance of order.
And with that act of acquainting oneself, the new skin hardens into leathery age
and the comfort of familiar territory soon replaces the siren song of alien
landscapes that now glimmer tantalisingly outside the boundaries that have in
sync with the steady winding up of time - surreptitiously crept over ones hunger

for the banquets of life. And I cant help but feel great sorrow at the thought of
this eventual numbing down.
Youth is to be perpetually at unease with the world. I know what I am doing. I am
trying to define the ineffable, trying perhaps, in youthful ignorance, to prospect
this pregnant mine of language for promising seams lined with meaning. And this
hesitant poking and shifting is also youth. Maybe you start to age only when you
stop probing around, and lingering, and questioning.
Youth is not knowing. Thankfully, youth is learning too.