When we are young we have options. We have opportunities. We have second chances. There’s always tomorrow, when we are young.

Youth represents all that lies ahead. Even through our angst ridden teenage years, we’re acutely aware that we are considered the hope of tomorrow, the leaders of tomorrow; we are the future and in us lay all the hopes and dreams for a better world.

No matter how successful we become, or how happy we are in our personal lives, to gaze into a mirror and see lines etched into our faces, our jowls and necks creased and sagging is to see limited options, lost opportunities, and no more second chances.

America’s obsession with youth is an obsession for that intangible quality that we somehow lose as our lives become mired in the mundane tasks of existence. We long for the ability to blow off work and not feel guilty or take off on a road trip with no destination in mind. We long for the sense not of irresponsibility, but no responsibility.

To be young is to not worry about retirement investments and house payments and office politics. To be young is to not worry about cholesterol and high blood pressure and osteoporosis. To be young is to not worry about being young.

Though we cannot forsake our responsibilities, we try to recapture at least some semblance of youth in the hopes of getting a little more mileage out of our lives. We dye our hair, get face-lifts and tummy tucks and tell our doctors we feel as good as we did at thirty.

Why do we try to hide the physical evidences of our age? In our minds, if we can appear to be young, we still have time to be young. Because now we are the present that was once the future. And as we look at our lined and creased faces, we ask our reflections, “Did we make the world a better place?”

If we have some vestiges of youth remaining within us we still have time to change the world. We still have time to be recognized as a contributor, as a useful member of society, something we did not feel a responsibility for when we were young.

Oh, the irony.

America, being the land of opportunity, may be obsessed with youth, and with images of youth, but it is also mindful of the cost of being young. Americans expect our youth to be driven, ambitious, passionate. We give them precious little time to be children. The wunderkind is revered. The precocious child is pampered and primed for the spotlight. We idolize the American Idols for their commercial value.

If America is obsessed with youth, it could be because youth is so easily exploited.

So when we, in the last half of our lives, stand before the mirror and scrutinize the lines and creases, the gray hairs and fattened waists, consider first what we have brought to the world to make it a better place. Were we the wunderkind, or the kid who took off on a road trip with no destination in mind?