People are always talking about the problem of youth（青春）. If there is one, which I take leave（许可） to doubt（怀疑）, then it is older people who create it, not the young themselves. Let us get down to fundamentals and agree that the young are, after all, human beings, people just like their elders. There is only one difference between an old man and a young one. The young man has a glorious（光荣的） future before him, and the old one has a splendid future behind him, and maybe that is where the rub（摩擦） is. When I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and uncertain, that I was a new boy in a huge school, and I would have been very pleased to be regarded（把…看作） as something so interesting as a problem.

  For one thing, being a problem gives you a certain identity（身份）, and that is one of the things the young are busily engaged（使从事于） in seeking（寻找）. I find young people exciting. They have an air of freedom（自由）, and they have not a dreary（沉闷的） commitment（委托事项） to mean ambitions（雄心） or love of comfort. They are not anxious（焦虑的） social climbers（登山者）, and they have no devotion to material（重要的） things. All this seems to me to link them with life and the origins（起源） of things. It's as if they were, in some sense, cosmic（宇宙的） beings in violent（暴力的） and lovely contrast（对比） with us suburban creatures.

  All that is in my mind when I meet a young person, he may be conceited, ill-mannered, presumptuous or fatuous（愚昧的）, but I do not turn for protection（保护） to dreary（沉闷的） clichés about respect for elders, as if mere（仅仅） age were a reason for respect（尊敬）. I accept that we are equals（对手）, and I will argue with them as an equal if I think he is wrong.