Aging with a Youthful Spirit
Whitehead and Jung
Whitehead offers a philosophical account of Youth that reaches far beyond the confines of age. He speaks of Youth not only as a chronological stage of life but also as an archetype—a mode of feeling and engagement with the world that can persist long after adolescence has passed. In this sense, a person may be “young at heart” even in later years, embodying qualities that Whitehead associates with Youth: immediacy, zest, and vividness of experience.
Whitehead writes:
“The deepest definition of Youth is, Life as yet untouched by tragedy. And the finest flower of youth is to know the lesson in advance of the experience, undimmed. Youth is distinguished for its whole-hearted absorption in personal enjoyments and personal discomforts. Quick pleasure and quick pain, quick laughter and quick tears, quick absence of care, and quick diffidence, quick courage and quick fear, are conjointly characters of youth. In other words, immediate absorption in its own occupations. On this side, Youth is too chequered to be termed a happy period. It is vivid rather than happy. The memories of youth are better to live through, than is youth itself. For except in extreme cases, memory is apt to count the sunny hours. Youth is not peaceful in any ordinary sense of that term. In youth despair is overwhelming. There is then no tomorrow, no memory of disasters survived.”
— Adventures of Ideas
This vivid portrayal of Youth helps us understand not only adolescence but also those adults who seem never to “grow up.” Popular culture often critiques such individuals as irresponsible or immature, but a Whiteheadian lens invites us to ask deeper questions: What are they avoiding? What are they preserving? What are they yearning for?
Whitehead suggests that the youthful soul lives immersed in the moment, untempered by tragedy, unshaped by the long memory of suffering endured and survived. The childlike heart can be charming, and even necessary—zest for life, after all, is a spiritual virtue in Whitehead’s philosophy. Yet, when one remains fixated in this mode—when the immediacy of Youth becomes a shelter from the tragic dimensions of life—then the refusal to grow up can become a refusal to integrate the fuller complexity of human experience.
Growth, for Whitehead, is not about abandoning the intensity or spontaneity of youth. It is about the emergence of peace, which he describes not as the absence of pain, but as a deep harmony that includes tragedy. To grow up, in a Whiteheadian sense, is not to forsake zest, but to carry it forward through the tragic, finding a quieter intensity that can coexist with memory, endurance, and even despair.
Some people never fully enter this broader field of experience. They live as though the tragedies of life can be permanently deferred or denied—through distraction, perpetual novelty, or emotional avoidance. From the outside, they may seem eternally youthful. But their vividness is fragile, their zest untethered. They resist the deeper form of aliveness that comes when one has known sorrow and chosen, still, to affirm life.
Thus, Whitehead’s account invites a compassionate analysis. Those who don’t “grow up” may be protecting themselves from a world they intuitively fear. And yet, the lure of the divine, in Whitehead’s terms, is always toward contrast with harmony—the integration of joy and suffering, memory and immediacy, youthful intensity and mature peace.
To remain young at heart is a gift. But to mistake the absence of tragedy for freedom, or the thrill of immediacy for wholeness, is to remain uninitiated into the fuller adventure of being. Growing up, then, is not the death of Youth—it is its deepening, its transformation, and its continuation within a richer, more inclusive field of experience.
*
Carl Jung offers a helpful companion to Whitehead in his exploration of the puer aeternus—the “eternal boy”—a psychological archetype describing adults, often men but not exclusively, who resist the responsibilities and groundedness of mature life. The puer lives in a world of possibility, enchanted by novelty and allergic to limitation. He prefers flight to rootedness, freedom to commitment, and idealism to compromise. The shadow side of the puer is a kind of tragic immaturity: a refusal to endure the slow work of integration and the demands of reality.
In Whiteheadian terms, the puer aeternus may be seen as someone entranced by zest but disconnected from Peace. The puer is all concrescence and no satisfaction—forever prehending new possibilities but unwilling to unify them into a coherent self. Jung notes that the puer often fears being “pinned down”—by a job, a relationship, or even a particular identity. Similarly, Whitehead’s Youth, when untempered by tragedy and memory, lives in a present unanchored by what came before or what might endure.
But Jung is careful not to demonize the puer. He understands that the vitality and openness of this archetype are essential for creativity, spiritual awakening, and renewal. The danger is not in the puer itself, but in its dominance when unbalanced by its complement—the senex, the archetype of structure, discipline, and rooted wisdom. The mature psyche, Jung suggests, requires a dialogue between the two: the exuberance of Youth and the steadiness of Age.
Whitehead, too, is not seeking the suppression of Youth but its deepening. He invites us to carry Youth forward—not in defiance of tragedy but in conversation with it. A grown-up soul, in this vision, is not one that abandons adventure or dreams, but one that can survive despair without being undone by it. It remembers disasters and integrates them. It can be “young at heart” without being stuck in a refusal to grow.
In this light, both Whitehead and Jung invite us into a paradox: to preserve the fire of Youth while cultivating the patience of Age; to affirm zest without forgetting grief; to strive for ideals while learning to live peacefully with finitude. Perhaps this, too, is what Whitehead means by Peace: not a dull resignation, but a matured vividness—a zest that has suffered, remembered, and still shines.
Whitehead writes:
“The deepest definition of Youth is, Life as yet untouched by tragedy. And the finest flower of youth is to know the lesson in advance of the experience, undimmed. Youth is distinguished for its whole-hearted absorption in personal enjoyments and personal discomforts. Quick pleasure and quick pain, quick laughter and quick tears, quick absence of care, and quick diffidence, quick courage and quick fear, are conjointly characters of youth. In other words, immediate absorption in its own occupations. On this side, Youth is too chequered to be termed a happy period. It is vivid rather than happy. The memories of youth are better to live through, than is youth itself. For except in extreme cases, memory is apt to count the sunny hours. Youth is not peaceful in any ordinary sense of that term. In youth despair is overwhelming. There is then no tomorrow, no memory of disasters survived.”
— Adventures of Ideas
This vivid portrayal of Youth helps us understand not only adolescence but also those adults who seem never to “grow up.” Popular culture often critiques such individuals as irresponsible or immature, but a Whiteheadian lens invites us to ask deeper questions: What are they avoiding? What are they preserving? What are they yearning for?
Whitehead suggests that the youthful soul lives immersed in the moment, untempered by tragedy, unshaped by the long memory of suffering endured and survived. The childlike heart can be charming, and even necessary—zest for life, after all, is a spiritual virtue in Whitehead’s philosophy. Yet, when one remains fixated in this mode—when the immediacy of Youth becomes a shelter from the tragic dimensions of life—then the refusal to grow up can become a refusal to integrate the fuller complexity of human experience.
Growth, for Whitehead, is not about abandoning the intensity or spontaneity of youth. It is about the emergence of peace, which he describes not as the absence of pain, but as a deep harmony that includes tragedy. To grow up, in a Whiteheadian sense, is not to forsake zest, but to carry it forward through the tragic, finding a quieter intensity that can coexist with memory, endurance, and even despair.
Some people never fully enter this broader field of experience. They live as though the tragedies of life can be permanently deferred or denied—through distraction, perpetual novelty, or emotional avoidance. From the outside, they may seem eternally youthful. But their vividness is fragile, their zest untethered. They resist the deeper form of aliveness that comes when one has known sorrow and chosen, still, to affirm life.
Thus, Whitehead’s account invites a compassionate analysis. Those who don’t “grow up” may be protecting themselves from a world they intuitively fear. And yet, the lure of the divine, in Whitehead’s terms, is always toward contrast with harmony—the integration of joy and suffering, memory and immediacy, youthful intensity and mature peace.
To remain young at heart is a gift. But to mistake the absence of tragedy for freedom, or the thrill of immediacy for wholeness, is to remain uninitiated into the fuller adventure of being. Growing up, then, is not the death of Youth—it is its deepening, its transformation, and its continuation within a richer, more inclusive field of experience.
*
Carl Jung offers a helpful companion to Whitehead in his exploration of the puer aeternus—the “eternal boy”—a psychological archetype describing adults, often men but not exclusively, who resist the responsibilities and groundedness of mature life. The puer lives in a world of possibility, enchanted by novelty and allergic to limitation. He prefers flight to rootedness, freedom to commitment, and idealism to compromise. The shadow side of the puer is a kind of tragic immaturity: a refusal to endure the slow work of integration and the demands of reality.
In Whiteheadian terms, the puer aeternus may be seen as someone entranced by zest but disconnected from Peace. The puer is all concrescence and no satisfaction—forever prehending new possibilities but unwilling to unify them into a coherent self. Jung notes that the puer often fears being “pinned down”—by a job, a relationship, or even a particular identity. Similarly, Whitehead’s Youth, when untempered by tragedy and memory, lives in a present unanchored by what came before or what might endure.
But Jung is careful not to demonize the puer. He understands that the vitality and openness of this archetype are essential for creativity, spiritual awakening, and renewal. The danger is not in the puer itself, but in its dominance when unbalanced by its complement—the senex, the archetype of structure, discipline, and rooted wisdom. The mature psyche, Jung suggests, requires a dialogue between the two: the exuberance of Youth and the steadiness of Age.
Whitehead, too, is not seeking the suppression of Youth but its deepening. He invites us to carry Youth forward—not in defiance of tragedy but in conversation with it. A grown-up soul, in this vision, is not one that abandons adventure or dreams, but one that can survive despair without being undone by it. It remembers disasters and integrates them. It can be “young at heart” without being stuck in a refusal to grow.
In this light, both Whitehead and Jung invite us into a paradox: to preserve the fire of Youth while cultivating the patience of Age; to affirm zest without forgetting grief; to strive for ideals while learning to live peacefully with finitude. Perhaps this, too, is what Whitehead means by Peace: not a dull resignation, but a matured vividness—a zest that has suffered, remembered, and still shines.
Little Boys Who Never Grew Up
Politicians as Adolescents
We have people in positions of power—congressmen, governors, corporate executives, media influencers—who never grew up. They wield authority with the emotional posture of adolescence: quick to offense, obsessed with image, addicted to winning, and allergic to accountability. They conflate leadership with performance, mistaking domination for strength and applause for legitimacy. Like eternal boys in suits, they chase the thrill of visibility while shirking the weight of moral responsibility.
In Whiteheadian terms, they embody the zest of Youth without the integration of Peace that transcends egotism and knows the reality of tragic beauty. Their energy is vivid, even magnetic—but shallow, disconnected from the tragic dimensions of life that give experience its moral gravity. They speak of greatness, freedom, innovation, but their visions are unmoored from compassion, memory, and shared becoming. And so their adventure becomes corrosive, their creativity reduced to spectacle.
Whitehead and Jung alike offer frameworks for understanding this arrested development. They do not reject the vitality of youth—far from it. But they call for its transformation. The boy in the man, the dreamer in the leader, must grow—not into cynicism, but into wisdom and empathy. Into courage that listens. Into presence that bears the sorrow of others without retreating into denial or blame.
If we are to renew our civic life, we must ask not only how to replace such leaders, but how to outgrow the cultural ideals that sustain them. A mature society is one that still dreams, but dreams with open eyes—with memory, with sorrow, with love.
In Whiteheadian terms, they embody the zest of Youth without the integration of Peace that transcends egotism and knows the reality of tragic beauty. Their energy is vivid, even magnetic—but shallow, disconnected from the tragic dimensions of life that give experience its moral gravity. They speak of greatness, freedom, innovation, but their visions are unmoored from compassion, memory, and shared becoming. And so their adventure becomes corrosive, their creativity reduced to spectacle.
Whitehead and Jung alike offer frameworks for understanding this arrested development. They do not reject the vitality of youth—far from it. But they call for its transformation. The boy in the man, the dreamer in the leader, must grow—not into cynicism, but into wisdom and empathy. Into courage that listens. Into presence that bears the sorrow of others without retreating into denial or blame.
If we are to renew our civic life, we must ask not only how to replace such leaders, but how to outgrow the cultural ideals that sustain them. A mature society is one that still dreams, but dreams with open eyes—with memory, with sorrow, with love.