The Youngest Day

The Japanese novelist Keigo Higashino once gave a speech I keep coming back to. Here it is, in my own translation:

When I was little, I was curious how old I would be when the twenty-first century arrived. So I did the math. The answer was forty-three.

I remember thinking: What? By then, everyone will be old! Even if the twenty-first century comes, it won’t be any fun.

Now I’m sixty-one. Looking back, I realize how incredibly young forty-three really was.

Perhaps next year, or ten years from now, when I look back on today, I’ll think the same thing about being sixty-one: I was so young back then.

Some people here will probably live to be a hundred. When they do, they’ll look back on themselves at eighty and realize, with wonder: I was still so young at eighty. There was still so much I could have done.

Perhaps some of you will turn forty tomorrow and already feel that forty is no longer young. But when you reach forty-five and look back, I’m sure you’ll wish you could return to that time.

Looking back over the long journey of life, the youngest day you have left is today. Of all the days ahead, today is the day with the most possibilities.

When you feel sorry about the years gone by, remember that today is the youngest day of the rest of your life.

If you dwell on the past and neglect the present, today will become the past you one day regret.

I once read a line that said: if you’re thirty-seven, instead of regretting that you can’t wake up eighteen again, pretend you’re ninety and you’ve just woken up thirty-seven again.