YOUTH IS A TRAP

Don't demand excellence in everything you do. Fall over in the snow. Wear your comfy clothes. Send messages to people whenever you feel like it. Burn memories, or keep them safe in a special box. Change you name if you want to. Formally or not. Watch trash TV. Read weird poetry. Walk along the river at night and laugh at geese. Share snacks. Grow old.

This is a picture of my grandfather having a lovely time perching on a rock.

Everyone's so afraid of ageing, of doing things wrong, of not doing enough, of looking bad. But we should do all of those things, with glee and with wild abandon. Run naked through the fields of time at sunset as a cow watches on, unbothered. Laugh hard and count your wrinkles, a reminder of all your funny faces, your comical frowns, and the times you see babies and you just gotta grin at them.

If you stop dreading getting older, then it can become a fun collecting process where you gather all the cute and silly and strange little memories that can rush behind your eyes in a montage set to a Carly Rae Jepsen song. You can look forward to whatever cool thing you will do or see when you're 55 and you've just bought an ugly plastic frog ornament to celebrate (this is just, maybe, how I envisage myself at age 55, purchasing weird frogs).

What's so great about youth anyway? Maybe you've got smooth skin and you can drink 1 (one) alcohol without feeling like something has died in your face the next day, but maybe you're also a beehive of worry and pressure. Your youthfulness does nothing to make you less insecure about all the little bodily things you know about yourself that you think are weird (ironically probably the things other people think are beautiful about you - your moles, the way your hair sticks up, your oddly shaped nose). Maybe it's idolised because it's a beginning, but what's a beginning when you can be in the middle of the story, which you thought was going to be conventional but that actually involves the acquisition of some ugly frog ornaments? Maybe it turns out to be a way better story.

No one knows what's going to happen, but spending your life dreading it is a mistake. Get older. Let each new number be an exciting declaration of your place in the world. You're here, and your new number is a ticket to all the trains waiting for you at the station. Let your grey hairs grow in like threads of confetti for your head, and forget about youth. Just shave the 'th' off. Because you'll always be you, with or without it.