During my mid to late teens I had occasion to meet and listen to a lot of elderly people. Perhaps it was a bit of a meme amongst them but I would often hear a common refrain, that ‘youth was wasted on the young.’

After hearing this a few times I began asking if there was anything specific that they meant by this. They would generally say that experience in life had taught them that youth is a time of less responsibility and greater vitality. I began to follow this with ‘if they had their time again, what they would do differently?’