The best age to be*

L.A. Hill & R.D.S Fieden

How often one hears children wishing they were grown up, and old people wishing they were young again. Each age has its pleasures and its pains, and the happiest person is the one who enjoys what each age gives him without wasting his time in useless regrets．

Childhood is a time when there are few responsibilities to make life difficult. If a child has good parents, he is fed, looked after and loved, whatever he may do. It is impossible that he will ever again in his life be given so much without having to do anything in return. In addition, life is always presenting new things to the child-things that have lost their interest for older people because they are too well-known. But a child has his parents, he is not so free to do what he wishes to do; he is continually being told not to do things or being punished for what he has done wrong.

When the young man starts to earn his own living, he can no longer expect others to pay for his food, his clothes, and his room, but has to work if he wants to live comfortably. If he spends most of his time playing about in the way that he used to as a child, he will go hungry. And if he breaks the laws of society as he used to break the laws of his parents, he may go to prison. If  however, he works hard, keeps out of trouble and has good health, he can have the great happiness of building up for himself his own position in society and enjoy success and good reputation.

Old age has always been thought of as the worst age to be, but it is not necessary for the old to be unhappy. Old age has it own happiness. They can have the joy of seeing their children making progress in life; they can watch their grandchildren growing up around them and, perhaps, best of all, they can, if their life has been a useful one, feel the happiness of having come through the battle of life safely and of having reached a time when they can lie back and rest, leaving others to continue the fight.

*Source:
Tran, van Đien, Complete English Essay Course, Saigon: Song Moi, 1961, p.285-286