Any Age But This One?

Occasionally people say how great it would be to be a different age and I've never really understood the attraction.

Has anyone ever said to you, "Wouldn't it be great to be 18 again (or 30 or 50)? Whenever I've heard this question my gut response has been absolutely no way! Sometimes the questioner adds "if you could go back knowing what you know now," and even that doesn't change my mind.

I can't imagine going back to an earlier part of my life. Why would I do that? The challenges I experience now are as important and relevant as the earlier events in my life. It would be like going on a trip and deciding to backtrack because the memory of a place visited earlier seems better than what I'm visiting now. It seems like hopeless romanticism to long for something past while the present is here right now.

I enjoy remembering the past, especially from the perspective of an older (and hopefully wiser!) vantage point. I appreciate the learning I can mine from my past, but I have no desire to actually live it again.

Now, that's not to say that I live perfectly in the present. I experience regrets about the past and sometimes worry about, or try to plan, the future. Even still, I know that life happens now, right this moment. To be anywhere else is to choose to be less than fully alive.