Forever Young

I want to connect a few sayings and verses to shed light on something. First, Jesus said: 

Assuredly, I say unto you, unless you become converted, and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3) 

There is a poem by William Wordsworth which I think sheds light on at least part of what this saying means.

ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD

(1803-1806)

   THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
   The earth, and every common sight,
     To me did seem
     Apparelled in celestial light,
   The glory and the freshness of a dream.
   It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
     Turn wheresoe'er I may,
     By night or day,
   The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

         II

     The Rainbow comes and goes,
     And lovely is the Rose,
     The Moon doth with delight
   Look round her when the heavens are bare,
     Waters on a starry night
     Are beautiful and fair;
    The sunshine is a glorious birth;
    But yet I know, where'er I go,
   That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

         III

   Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
    And while the young lambs bound
     As to the tabor's sound,
   To me alone there came a thought of grief:
   A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
     And I again am strong:
   The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
   No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
   I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,
   The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
     And all the earth is gay;
      Land and sea
    Give themselves up to jollity,
     And with the heart of May
    Doth every Beast keep holiday;--
     Thou Child of Joy,
   Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
     Shepherd-boy!

         IV

   Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call
    Ye to each other make; I see
   The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
    My heart is at your festival,
    My head hath its coronal,
   The fulness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all.
    Oh evil day! if I were sullen
    While Earth herself is adorning,
     This sweet May-morning,
    And the Children are culling
     On every side,
    In a thousand valleys far and wide,
    Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
   And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:--
    I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
    --But there's a Tree, of many, one,
   A single Field which I have looked upon,
   Both of them speak of something that is gone:
    The Pansy at my feet
    Doth the same tale repeat:
   Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
   Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

These thoughts lie at the heart of Wordsworth's poetic works and perhaps cannot be fully appreciated without an immersion in Wordsworth's other poetry. In "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" he is subjecting to analysis the feelings that in many of his simpler poems are simply expressed. "While the young lambs bound / As to the tabor's sound" is an effort to express delight, but only so as to study it, to try to figure out whence it comes from and why, Wordsworth thinks, such transports of joy fade as one grows older. Elsewhere Wordsworth expresses delight merely to express delight, and perhaps does it more sublimely. Still, I think one knows what Wordsworth means, knows "the glory and the dream," "the bliss," "the laughter of Heaven"... and I think it's true, too, that certain memories of childhood often evoke it most poignantly. In the next stanza Wordsworth expresses a theory of sorts:

         V

   Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
   The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
    Hath had elsewhere its setting,
    And cometh from afar:
    Not in entire forgetfulness,
    And not in utter nakedness,
   But trailing clouds of glory do we come
    From God, who is our home:
   Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
   Shades of the prison-house begin to close
    Upon the growing Boy,
   But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
    He sees it in his joy;
   The Youth, who daily farther from the east
    Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
    And by the vision splendid
    Is on his way attended;
   At length the Man perceives it die away,
   And fade into the light of common day.

Mormons, who believe in a "pre-existence," find the last stanza to be a confirmation, from a secular poet, of their beliefs. I think Wordsworth did not mean, however, that his words be taken as literal truth; when church people objected to the heterodoxy of the supposition he defended it as a "poetic postulate" useful to communicate certain feelings. Though even from an orthodox Christian perspective, though, Wordsworth's theory has truth in it, but I'll come back to that.

Old age is usually seen as an evil, and eternal youth is a perennial longing of mankind. This desire need not have any special, transcendental character: one might simply want to retain strength and beauty and sexual potency, and avoid medical bills and wrinkles and hardness of hearing. A yearning for childhood such as Wordsworth expresses is different: it is not at all practical; its motive is aesthetic, romantic, or so to speak numinous. But I think there is always, or at least usually, this transcendental element in the desire for eternal youth, even in its cruder forms, the hair dyes and workouts and fashions in dress and cults of movie stars that it motivates. A Bob Dylan song contains these words of blessing: "May you stay forever young." What blessing better captures all the desires of the human heart in its best moments than this? And yet it is so absurd that the wish hardly seems to be worth expressing. I like the song "Forever Young" by Alphaville because it is bold enough to express it:

Let's dance in style, lets dance for a while 
Heaven can wait we're only watching the skies 
Hoping for the best but expecting the worst 
Are you going to drop the bomb or not? 
Let us die young or let us live forever 
We don't have the power but we never say never 
Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip 
The music's for the sad men 
Can you imagine when this race is won 
Turn our golden faces into the sun 
Praising our leaders we're getting in tune 
The music's played by the madman 


Forever young, i want to be forever young 
Do you really want to live forever, forever forever 
Forever young, i want to be forever young 
Do you really want to live forever 
Forever young 


Some are like water, some are like the heat 
Some are a melody and some are the beat 
Sooner or later they all will be gone 
Why don't they stay young 
It's so hard to get old without a cause 
I don't want to perish like a fading horse 
Youth is like diamonds in the sun 
And diamonds are forever 
So many adventures couldn't happen today 
So many songs we forgot to play 
So many dreams are swinging out of the blue 
We let them come true 

Forever young, i want to be forever young 
Do you really want to live forever, forever forever 
Forever young, i want to be forever young 
Do you really want to live forever forever forever 
Forever young, i want to be forever young 
Do you really want to live forever, forever forever 
Forever young, i want to be forever

I like the hint of ambivalence. The chorus alternates: "I want to be forever young" and "Do you really want to live forever?" There is a hint of smugness in the later stanzas of Wordsworth's "Ode," whose ending, "To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," has an air of complacently celebrating his poetic maturity, which, after all, has just been displayed in authoring a fine poem! Oh, well, it's all right then! By contrast, Alphaville's "Do you really want to live forever?" is not the voice of complacency, but, I think, of a kind of holding back or fear; its effect is to underline the wonderful wildness of this unattainable desire. I think this juxtaposition of ardor and trepidation is wise. I'll appeal to another poem:

I THOUGHT no more was needed
Youth to prolong
Than dumb-bell and foil
To keep the body young.
Oh, who could have foretold	5
That the heart grows old?
Though I have many words,
What woman’s satisfied,
I am no longer faint
Because at her side?	10
Oh, who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?
I have not lost desire
But the heart that I had,
I thought ’twould burn my body	15
Laid on the death-bed.
But who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?

Only the refrain of this poem is, I think, really excellent poetry, yet the thought the poem expresses is an important one. For it claims that it is not enough merely to wish for eternal physical youth; it claims that "the heart grows old." This is the insight of Wordsworth's "Ode" too. And it is the answer to Alphaville's question. Do you really want to live forever? Yes -- and no. We want to be forever young, but the heart grows old. And this is unexpected. I think all children disdain adults to some extent, not understanding how adults can be so easily bored by things (cartoons, board games, toys) they find so delightful. And rightly so in a way. Yet the same thing will happen to them. They will become bored by the toys and the games and the old stories. I remember how Christmas-- the candy, the opening presents-- used to be so gloriously delightful an event, and how it faded. And not all, and perhaps few-- one has to know a person well to be sure-- will ever discover higher, stronger delights in which to rejoice.

And this brings us back to the saying of Jesus, who invites us to "become as little children"-- whatever that means. Without saying how it can be done, I think I can see a little of why this is necessary. One must, somehow, reverse the law of fallen human nature by which every delight is dulled and fades, otherwise the gift of eternal life would be of no use, would be a burden, a curse. It is within God's power, but it would serve no good purpose, to make us all "forever young," physically. If we can somehow make our hearts cease to grow old, God will provide, in due course, the new bodies in which we can live forever.

We call God "Our Father, who art in heaven," and rightly so in some ways: He is stronger and wiser than we, He loves us and seeks our good, He ought to be obeyed. Yet in another way the analogy breaks down. A child sees in his father a being more careworn than himself, beset with temptation, and for that reason, at least sometimes, less able to delight in things. God is like the father, yet he is also like the child who wakes a groaning parent on Christmas morning with his impatient cries of anticipation and joy. God says to us, "Thou shalt not...", but also "Come and see! Come and see!"