Dear Editor,
“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – C.S. Lewis
“Oh no, I’m too old for that. Not at my time of life. That ship has sailed. You’re only getting weaker at age 40 with fewer opportunities. What have you done with your life? I thought that I would’ve bought a house by now. Starting over at this age? Where am I going with 4 children? Who will want me? You better choose now because it only gets worse the older you get.”
I wonder if this sounds familiar to you? It does to me. For many years I watched as many people around me have set unrealistic goals, limiting beliefs, and placed unfair rules on themselves, generally based upon the expectations of others – especially by a certain age.
Some have convinced themselves that they couldn’t leave their well-paid office job to pursue a dream, because of their advancing years. A colleague once shared that she didn’t pursue an advanced degree because she thought that she was too old, at age 41. She now deeply regrets this, while another was completing his college degree at age 48.
A close friend from college with an advanced degree in engineering got married in her 40s and had her third child at age 47. She loves her life and it is very evident too.
Obama retired at age 55. Ronald Reagan took his oath at age 69. Sydney is 3 hours ahead of Perth, but this doesn’t mean that Perth is slow. Someone graduated at age 22 but took a decade to secure an excellent job. Sandra, a 52-year-old senior executive, lost her job and moved back to Alabama and in with her mother.
Someone became a CEO at 28 and died at 50, while another became CEO at 50 and lived to 90. Someone is still single, and another is getting their third divorce. Dana had her daughter in college, she died at 39. I watched a neighbour brag about buying her house before everyone else did, and she also was the first to foreclosure. Her partner also died very soon afterwards. A dear friend of mine waited almost 20 years for his dream home; he just paid off his mortgage in just 7 years. At age 65 Colonel Sanders parlayed his now famous chicken recipe into a multimillion-dollar business – KFC
You are a unique individual that cannot fit into a rigid system set by others. Everyone operates in their own time zone. Some may seem ahead of you, and others may seem behind you, but everyone is running their own race at their own pace. Do not envy nor mock them; they are in their own time zone. Don’t pay attention to what others around you may be secretly thinking of your latest venture.
I know that certain family members may believe that you should be working in a full-time corporate job with benefits and that you should “suck it up and accept a life of limitations.” In trying to make others proud of you, to satisfy their own beliefs and values, you completely overlooked your own pride in yourself, your values, and your dreams. You abandoned and betrayed yourself.
This, I believe, is a life lesson that for the most part can only be learned and utilized after a certain amount of life experience.
You can still value the opinions of others, but do not let them influence your intuition and the passion that you have for what you are trying to achieve. You’ll gain priceless knowledge from each attempt, and as you get older, you’ll gradually start to gain some clarity about what you want from my life.
As a parent, you’ll discover a resolve, power, and dignity that had been lying within you dormant, an untapped resource. With age comes responsibility, but it also brings with it new outlooks on life. It brings with it feelings of self-awareness and of clarity that may not be there in your earlier years.
I also believe that our dreams and desires can take many years to truly form into something that resembles our true path, and I’m not sure that this process ever really ends unless we allow it to – which would be such a terrible shame. Each of our life experiences forms our perception of the world around us, and this, in turn, forms our vision of what we want our future to hold. It is imperative that we never become too old to dream and that we have the confidence to act on those dreams to create the lives we most covet, at any time along our journey.
Sometimes, we must learn how to do nothing, which is actually much harder than it sounds, if we have always been busy, living a life of stress and overwork.
If we have nothing to aspire or look forward to in life, we end up feeling like we are going nowhere, and we stagnate. I believe that these limiting thoughts of age hold us back from living the truly miraculous lives we deserve and are fully able to cultivate if we take diligent care of ourselves. Age, if anything, is on our side. When we grow older, our goals and dreams should really, by our life experiences, seem more attainable.
It is a pity that age is seen as something of a restriction; and that we adopt this belief through our own perceptions of what others view as acceptable for us at a given time. I learned that the advice that others give to you is merely based on their level of consciousness.
Life is about the right time for you to act. Your journey may be a straight path or a long winding one. But, just relax! You’re not late, slow or behind. You are just in time ... in your very own time zone.
The most important relationship is the one that you have with yourself.
Carmelise Gittens
