8.6.08

一段落

一昨日をもって勤務が終了し、退職日までは有給休暇として過ごす日々となった。今日はまだ日曜だから、これまでとの違いをあまり感じていないが、明日からは不思議な気分になりそう。とはいえ、明日は本社へ出る必要がありそうだけど。

金曜は職場の人々に挨拶しながら、人に恵まれた職場だったなぁとつくづく思った。そういえば先日の歓送迎会で上司が送ってくれた言葉が印象的だった。

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind
(青春とは人生の一時ではなく、心の持ちようである)

Samuel Ullmanの詩の一節で、古くはマッカーサーにも引用されているとか。全文を探したらよかったので、以下に貼り付け。

YOUTH

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 body 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 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.