Last updated on October 21, 2015

The term “Golden age” is so often misunderstood and misused. It’s a term that should be understood metaphorical.  It describes an age, a period in time of great peace, prosperity and happiness.

The Greek poet Hesiod gave the world a first glimpse of the golden age. In “Works and Days”  from around 700 BC, he describes a decline of man. From golden to silver to bronze, to the iron present. Who knows what comes next.

In the “Golden Age”, humans were without flaw and the earth was overflowing with flowers, fruits and corn. Man did not have to work and knew no master. Now, in the ongoing iron, we are “with toils and grief oppressed, / Nor day nor night can yield a pause of rest.”

Over the years, Plato, Ovid, Virgil and many others all played with the idea, but the essential concept remained the same, “The Golden Age” belongs to the past, has already happened; things are worse now. The job of the golden age is to remind us how much better things could be, or have been.

Nobody ever declared a time as the “Golden Age” that’s done later, while looking back at the good old days.

Today’s daily prompt leaves me a little bit confused, since the “Golden Age” does not stand for eternity or for living forever (God forbid, who would want that in the first place?)

As for the “Golden Age” in my lifetime, who knows…it might still becoming. I will declare it one day, maybe 200 years from now, when I will be bored, sitting there on my cloud -considering there is a cloud to begin with.

As you can see, I don’t have any plans to live forever, I don’t think the world would want or need that. 🙂

I shared a song yesterday with a blogging friend and this post reminds me at it as well.

“The Golden Leaves!”      Do you remember how it first begun?

Golden Age

If you had to live forever as either a child, an adolescent, or an adult, which would you choose — and why?