Received good news this morning around 5:30AM.  Our granddaughter was born.  We plan to travel to Louisville on Wednesday.  She surprised all of us by coming just a bit earlier than expected.  Life is nothing but surprise after surprise.  Another argument for living simply, in a uncomplicated fashion.  One must always be able to flex, bend with the ebb and flow of things.

A birth and keeping company with older grandchildren is a reminder that I was young once.  The kid that was, still lives somewhere deep inside.  There is nothing that a kid desires but play.  Play is how one learns of the world.  And every day is intense, every encounter, every new experience is of paramount importance.  This must be so because there is yet nothing pleasant or tragic to look back upon, by which to compare.  Every single day is the first day, — of the rest of one’s life.

A friend suggested that I listen to a tune from 1967 written by Eric Burden of The Animals.  1965 stands out for me as my best year of high school.  That year was luminous with adventures with friends, with girls.  Things went downhill after that.

I listened to Burden sing his anthem to his youth and was moved.  The youtube video moved me even more deeply.  The vocalist as a more mature adult remembers his youth, recognizing hardship for what it was, but also recognizing the excitement of discovery for what it was.

The video is something else again.  The Battle for Britain photo material juxtaposes the background of the singers youth represented by his father’s role in WWII.  I’ve seen these combat footage scenes a number of times in the past and they always affect me with their beauty and their monstrous violence.  The film showing the disabled Focke-Wulf Fw 190 trailing smoke, as it falls in a fiery arc to earth always moves me.  The Spitfires and the fighters of the Luftwaffe perform a ballet in the sky, one man lives and another dies.

This, is life.

When I Was Young
By Eric Burdon & The Animals

The rooms were so much colder then
My father was a soldier then
And times were very hard
When I was young

I smoked my first cigarette at ten
And for girls, I had a bad yen
And I had quite a ball
When I was young

When I was young, it was more important
Pain more painful
Laughter much louder
Yeah, when I was young
When I was young

I met my first love at thirteen
She was brown and I was pretty green
And I learned quite a lot when I was young
When I was young
When I was young

It was more important
Pain more painful
Laughter much louder
Yeah, when I was young
When I was young

My faith was so much stronger then
I believed in fellow men
And I was so much older then
When I was young
When I was young
When I was young

Songwriters: Eric Victor Burdon