The best part of life is wherever you are right now. One can always find evidence supporting one’s point of view:
Childhood? Golden.
Young adulthood? Prime.
Adulthood? The apex.
Old age? A period of ripeness in all faculties.
All are true, I believe. You needn’t wait, and you haven’t missed out.
Have they been experienced in a premature or delayed fashion? There is only one requirement in my opinion: follow nature and don’t remain a child (devoid of action and responsibility) your whole life…
I’m 27, and as I approach 30 I find myself missing a lot of my childhood memories; they seem to have flown by. Sometimes I harp too much on this though, and I forget that the present is also just as good (if not better) as the past. This quote from Seneca, in his letters, has helped me a great deal with this:
“Is it not living unnaturally to aim at imparting the bloom of youth to a different period of life – can there be a sorrier or crueller practice than that whereby a boy is never, apparently, allowed to grow up into a man, in order that he may endure a man’s attentions for as long as may be?”
