Last month the Jubilee Project published a short video in which they ask 50 people 1 simple question: If you could be any age, what age would you be? They ask the question of children and seniors and people of every age between. The answers are not surprising—not surprising in a culture that so honors autonomy and freedom, that so honors youth. Most wanted to be in their late teens or early twenties so they could live or relive the days of youth, the days when they were young and energetic and care-free, the days before the onset of so many of life’s regrets and responsibilities.
If you could be any age, what age would you be?
As long as I can remember I have wanted to be older, older than right then, older than right now. When I was sixteen I wanted to be seventeen so I could get out of high school and get started on college. When I was seventeen I wanted to be twenty so I could be done with college and move on to a career. I finished high school a year ahead of my peers and university two years ahead mostly because I was stretching and straining to be older.
If I could be any age, what age would I be? I certainly wouldn’t be a day younger than my current age of 39. When I look back at 16 and 18 and 21 and the other significant milestones of youth, I have no desire to return to them. I have some fond memories, to be sure. I might go back and relive certain moments just to feel and experience them again. But I have no desire to go back, no desire to be young.
There is no path to maturity but the path that leads through time.
I have no desire to be young because I treasure what has come with being old—or older, at least. An 18-year-old body is terrible value in exchange for a 39-year-old mind. A 19-year-old’s autonomy makes a woefully poor trade for a 39-year-old’s Christian maturity. A 21-year-old’s optimism is absurd in light of a 39-year-old’s realism. Even a newlywed’s romance, while genuine, is shallow in comparison to the depth and stability that comes with the passage of years and decades. It is maturity I have always longed for, maturity I have always sought after—maturity of mind, spirit, relationship. There is no path to maturity but the path that leads through time. To go back would be to forsake hard-won maturity, to even desire to go back would be to prefer folly over wisdom. I would never want to do it. Those days may have been good, but these days are far better.
How old would I want to be? 39 at the very least, but probably even older than that, older than I am now. It’s not so much that I want the years, but that I long for the character, the maturity, and the closeness to Christ that comes with the years. I will gladly take the years if only they make me more like Christ and draw me closer to Christ. That’s the best exchange of all.
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