Don’t let time pass you By

Don’t let time pass you By

THERE comes that moment of truth in everyone’s life.   You realize one day that your life is stretching out behind you — not in front of you. That your major accomplishments are in the past. Perhaps that you are never going to be president of the company. Or that you will not make it among the wealthy.   Crisis.   Your life seems at a major crossroads. One part of you responds — keep plodding into the future. Remain calm and stable.   The other side of you yearns to try something new, something different. Leave the comfort and security of your job and start your own company. Prove to the world you are not ready to be put out to pasture — that you have it all over those young up-and-comers in the corporate structure. 
 Start wearing blue jeans. Learn to speak the latest teen jargon. Allow your hair to sprout into a short pony tail in the back.   Then one day you look in the mirror and staring back at you is a slightly gray, slightly bald, slightly overweight individual that you barely recognize as the imagined you.   Crisis.   The next thing you know you hear about an old high school buddy who just died of a heart attack while shoveling snow off his driveway. He was only 43. Exactly your age. And you realize you haven’t been exercising as you should.   Crisis.  Have you ever just sat down and observed people from a distance? Not in a stalker-ish way but in a curious one. Have you ever had a conversation with someone much older than you and notice how they look when they tell you stories from the past? As if they’re not really into what’s happening at the moment but someplace else. Not in a crazy way but in a reminiscent one.
I’m not asking you to snoop into other peoples businesses; I’m asking you to listen carefully when people tell you their stories. Listen attentively to the way they tell you their good memories. Listen intently and notice the catch in their voices when they tell you how happy they were in those moments; and then evaluate yourself if you, yourself, have enough stories to tell when you reach the age where, suddenly, you’re the one looking back on the good old’ days.
This is a gentle reminder to fill your life with memories worth smiling about in years to come; it’s the permission you’re looking for to do the things you’ve been putting off for the couple of weeks or months; this is the push you’re waiting for to do what you want; this is the sign that you’re hoping to live a little, if not a lot.
This is to remind you to stop depriving yourself of the simple pleasures of life and to just do whatever it is that you want to do. Don’t be afraid to try new things, or to even change some old ways. I know that doubts would always be lurking at the back of your mind, same as it’s always lurking at the back of mine, but that shouldn’t stop you from taking a few risks of your own because, really, there are always pros to every con.
I hope that you’d be brave enough to do all the things that you know would give you joy. I hope that when the time comes that you’re the one sitting and waiting for people to tell your stories to you’d have a number of moments to share. I hope that the catch in your voice when you reminisce won’t be because of regrets but because of the laughter that you’d be unsuccessfully holding in for the reason that you’d still feel the same happiness you felt when you did whatever you thought you couldn’t.

You are good enough. xoxo

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