There's something I often say to my kids when one or the other is whining about lost chances--"It's not too late until you're dead." Yet as I reach another birthday, I realize that I have mentally moved a great deal of life into the 'too late' category. It's not as if I consider an activity or an accomplishment and then reach the reasonable conclusion that I don't have the brains, strength, looks, appetite, (insert attribute here) for it. I just assume it's too late.
So, with the aforementioned birthday looming I decided to make a list of things it really is too late for me to do, assuming I even wanted to do them. I expected a really long list since I do sometimes walk around in a fog of wouldacouldashoulda.
Once I ruled out things I have absoultely no interest in pursuing, the list got really really short. Of course, I probably will not learn to be a jet pilot. But I don't want to be a jet pilot. I'm too old to be a major league baseball player--but I've always been the wrong gender for that.
I'm not too old to learn new things--maybe I'll learn slower, but since when was youth a prerequisite for learning a language, learning to bake puff pastry, playing boogie-woogie piano, or snowboarding? OK--the snowboarding thing may be a little out of reach. But it's not too late to live somewhere else, develop a taste for olives, dye my hair odd colors, or write a book.
In fact, with the exception of things is was too late to do from the moment I was born who I am, what is really out of reach? We may be limited by our interests or talents--I will probably not star in a Broadway musical--but that doesn't stop me from knowing all the songs and singing along.
When I was young and money was tight, I used to joke that I could always go to work as a stripper if worse came to worst (no--I couldn't really, honest). And you know what? That may be the single thing it's really too late for me to do. Oh yeah..and the baseball thing. And being president. That's about it. What's on your 'too late' list?
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