I saw how many people were poor and how many kids my age went to school hungry in the morning which I don't think most of my contemporaries in racially segregated schools in the South thought very much about at the time.
Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age when the eager passions of youth are cooled and the infirmities of age not yet begun as we see that the shadows which are at morning and evening so large almost entirely disappear at midday.
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.
It is change continuing change inevitable change that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is but the world as it will be.