Youth tends to be all about production and reproduction: putting new beings into the world.

And our youth-cult culture is also entirely oriented toward products, productivity, and production on ever-increasing scale.

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When the youthful mind thinks about the new, what is conceived is a novel thing that nobody has seen before. There might be a sense or full awareness of some visionary difference, but that difference will be expressed and encountered as a new product of some kind that coming from some new “place”, and capable of leading a receptive soul there.

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Middle age is (for me, anyway) about the recognition that every production comes from and appears in some sort of intellectual/spiritual space — but also that space can be generated or it can atrophy. Some situations are ontologically expansive, accommodating many kinds of being and presenting opportunities for them to interact. Other situations are ontologically constrictive, admitting either one uniform kind of being, or a strictly defined system of types that interact in prescribed ways. And the same situation can move back and forth between these poles, expanding and contracting in response to its inner and outer workings.

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Imagine what a life dedicated to space-creation might look, sound, speak and act like.