Photo by emdot

By Sarah D. Park

In the bathroom of my parents’ home, there is a poem scotch-taped to the wall. Should you sit down on the toilet, you can easily read it from there. I cannot remember when this poem first appeared — at least since the time I was in fifth grade — and it did not come with any explanation or fanfare when it simply appeared one day. And I’d like to share it with you.

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what’s next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and women and from the infinite, so long are you young.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.

The original paper became warped due to the condensation in the bathroom. A new paper now sits in a clear plastic paper guard, freshly scotch-taped to the wall, and Mom has included a Korean translation below it for good measure. She didn’t care to attribute the poem’s author and so neither shall I.

Try as I might, I cannot help but read this poem every time I’m sitting on the toilet. I don’t even think it’s a particularly good or provocative poem, but I often feel gratitude that the poem so captures my mother’s spirit. Perhaps by sheer force of repetition, I see how these simple lines have formed and also reflect my family.

My father who pursues his dream of preaching in his late 60s. My mother who so loves to learn and improve her skills in teaching or ping-pong. My brother and I who are both freelancers in our respective passions: videography and writing. It is perhaps here that the poem has conflicted with my parents’ wishes; it is unfortunate that neither one of us has turned out to be the cash cow for the family. It could still happen, but no one is holding their breath at this point.

I think the real insight to be gained is not from the poem itself but from experiencing it from such a humble seat. It feels gleefully Korean somehow, like how we make delicious, heady stews out of weeds, to bestow a commonplace thing with an unforeseen depth. The poem and seat stay the same, while I change and grow older, noticing how different lines will stand out when I return to this litmus test time and time again — to see if I have grown old or grown young.

Sarah D. Park is a freelance writer whose work focuses on the cultivation of cross-racial dialogue with a Christian faith orientation. She is also a story producer for Inheritance Magazine and manages communications for several organizations. She currently calls the Bay Area her home but is an Angeleno through and through.