Sharpening the edge of a knife

And now your 25!
When you were 18 you were all hormones and no freedom. You were let out into the world to tear up the world with a lode of dumb ideas. And now you are 25.
Still full of hormones screaming at you to fuck shit up, but with the added benefit of the Ghosts of Dumb ideas past hovering over your shoulder. He's a prick, always there to remind me what I should and shouldn't do. Not like my parents when I was 18 who could only warn me in words. This bastard can just show me pictures and hi-res video.
"What's that?" He asks, "Want to stay out till 3 drinking, smoking, and hitting on women?" Causally, he triggers a thought. A memory of me with a headache telling my boss she's a bitch.
Oh, yeah, right.
"Hey," I tell him. "Imma gonna consume massive amounts of stuff because I'm stressing the fuck out."
In a voice that's almost a whisper he says: "Nateva".
"B-b-but, look at my friends! They go for drinks! On Wednesday!"
"That guy there has more money then you will ever see in three lifetimes. That guy has the body of Apollo and calls himself an artist because he has a job that lets him sleep till 12pm and goes to work whenever."
Most of the time, ignoring him is easy. As Robin Williams once said, "God gave man a brain and a penis, but only enough blood to power one at a time."
My advice: Stay blissfully ignorant of the poets, the artists and the philosophers. Thoreau is the reason why you are hungry and broke in a tent in the woods, Burroughs is the reason why your drunk in a small apartment trying to make it with sketchy women, and Hesse wrote the words that justify your life.
Better yet, no harm has come out of Browning or Tennyson. Rowling, Lovecraft and Tolkien give people harmless fantasy escape. It gives the mind to think, relax, and dream about wholesome activities and magic.
C.P. Snow? That dude is dangerous, making the world think science and art should be one and that ethics should a concern for science. You'll find yourself making videos on youtube about math using tinkertoys before long, when you should be contributing to the machine of society. You will be calling for the creation of affordable solar panels for the third world.
What happens to young trouble makers, the youth that stopped around and demanded change? Mandela is dying, Johnny Rotten is a dick, Bono is an arrogant ass, and the ones who died from alcohol, people and plain bad luck are too many to count.
So raise a glass to the hormones of the young, kick the Ghost in the nuts, and live like Dylan Thomas.