What Do You Do With Your Best Sap?

Don’t waste the flower of age in vain occupations

A tree grows thanks to the sap that flows through its branches and trunk from its roots. This sap is the metaphor of our vital energy, it peaks at a certain age to decline with time. The inevitable decline of our energy, we compensate it with more spirit, more wisdom. However, nothing can really replace the vigor of a young shoot that life blesses with all its strength. Youth is the spearhead of change. When we freeze youth, we block a momentum that aspires to express itself. Our energy is limited in time and we are in the habit of wasting it when it peaks. We waste this vital force in vain distractions (entertainment of all kinds), in sterile quarrels, in a cult of ignorance after all. It is often only later that we realize how much of our energy has been used foolishly, either because we have let ourselves be influenced by bad ideologies or people who carry them, or because of a form of laziness.

The great energy we have at a young age biases our projection on the future. We think we are old with our youthful energy. But this is a miscalculation. Postponing ideas of travel until later, at the time of retirement for example, can be a bad bet. We don’t measure the change that will take place and that, for example, our mobility and our health will no longer be the same, which will necessarily constrain our movements and the type of activity we could engage in.

The sap that flows with strength will not do so indefinitely, which is why it is more than essential to think of ourselves as old when we are young. Asking for advice virtually from your future self (who you will be in 50 years for example) can be a good exercise. Talking to the person we will be, who will supposedly be wiser but with less vitality, could help us make the right choices today. Not to have regrets or remorse is to act intelligently and sparingly with the vigor we enjoy, which will leave us one day or another.

We can extend the appearance of youth by a few years, or even a few decades, but we cannot stop the aging process, which requires us to manage this energy capital wisely. We can even say that what makes the difference between two people in terms of their level of success or achievement is the way in which they have generated the energy that was made available to them during their youth. We are not born totally equal, there is always an inequality of opportunity between the inhabitants of this planet (access to education, capital, health care etc.). However, there is an equalizer, it is the vitality of our age. The wisdom with which we manage our energy potential is what will distinguish us from our contemporaries in the long run.