26 Deadly sins Y is for Youth

This is the last week of the A to Z blogging challenge.  Only two days left.  I don’t know how but I have strayed into the last Sunday.  I have run out of days.  Surely, blogging on a Sunday is not a sin.

I have changed my mind about what do go with for Y.  X, y and z are a challenge in themselves.  Throughout the month of April, I have been modernising the seven deadly sins with my suggested twenty six versions.  Humans, it would seem, have an insatiable ability to sin.

Y is for youth.  This is not a tirade against youthfulness.  I was young once.  We all were. Being young is not a sin, trying to stay young when you should know better is.

When I was at school they had just raised the school leaving age from fourteen to sixteen.  Times were different then.  By our late teens we became adults.  We got married in our early twenties and settled down with children, if we were fortunate.  By forty you were middle aged, by sixty you were old and by seventy there was a good chance you’d be dead.  People live longer these days. That is great.  Being fifty is the new forty and people can expect to have a long and fruitful retirement.

I have no problem with this but when we get up the other end of the scale it turns out that we have created a mollycoddled generation. We have seen the rise of the man-child.

Aristotle said ‘Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.’  Not now.  There are people in their thirties that act like teenagers.  They hang onto their parent’s apron strings.  They make withdrawals from the bank of mum and dad.  They are swaddled with the kindness of their antecedents yet won’t accept their responsibilities. It is all gap years and gaming chairs.

They may have a long life ahead of them yet their parents might not have that luxury. Give them a break.  Grow up for pity’s sake.

Thou shalt not unduly hang on to your youth.