‘Let me introduce today’s speaker.’
‘She has achieved at the age of 35, 12 years of stellar contributions to the profession of medicine, creating new programs that have improved patient outcomes in the field of ophthalmology by 12%. She also, consistently contributes to research papers in psychiatry and to her community church outreach, all while being a dedicated wife and mother of three children under ten years old.’
Ever been at a function and heard that kind of introduction for a speaker?
Ok… maybe that was over kill… or maybe not.
Even though that description was completely hypothetical, I have heard similar introductions made with actual living, breathing people. They may have been a hair older about 5 to 8 years, but not much more. The rest would be almost identical.
Now while this is awesome; more and more I realize feelings of inadequacy within myself as I consider my own use of the time I have already spent when I hear these incredible people being announced. The more I put myself in positions that stretch me; going to attend an event that require me to be around unfamiliar people, even conferences within my profession, the more I find that youth serves a great time to build the muscles of what our future will demand.
That is the supreme gift that youth delivers in disguise.
Why do I say “in disguise”?
Well… I am seeing only few who have unmasked its true identity and work to use it to their advantage with intention in all areas of their lives. Most of what I notice is that we may design our lives in youth to achieve a main goal, only to achieve it and realize that the process of singular focus reduced progress in other areas over the same time. Other areas that were also important to us, but we neglected. (Health and finances often fall into this bucket).
Of course, this depends on what we desire. What we ultimately want our future to look and feel like. But, in any case, the time of youth still serves as a valuable foundation that can provide for that which often we take for granted. I have and now I feel the stretch even more so as I navigate my goals at a culturally presumed later stage. In order to remind myself that I can still achieve what I want despite the feeling that I am starting later in life, I take some time to remind myself of my goals and the intention behind them. I get around as many people as I can who have demonstrated possibilities when it seemed there were none. These reminders on a daily and moment by moment basis serve to keep me moving forward. Even as I realize that had I attended to these learnings earlier, I would now be more masterful in handling the situations as I would have been exposed many times before.
The ‘disguise’ of youth is that we have ‘time’. Time to do lots of things that we want to. And I would agree, this is true.
The problem is, that later in life we then say, ‘I wish I had done this …when I was younger’. If this is true and the former also true, what went wrong?
Didn’t we do as we pleased with our youth?
If yes, then why the regrets still?
The truth as I observe for myself, is that the ‘time’ that being young affords is to do the things we want to do then AND for our future. We miss that gift of time to plan for later that youth affords us.
Not being exempt from this in any way I have began to do what I can now, because NOW is what I have.
Have you successfully used your youth by your estimation?
To enjoy the time of youth and to plan for the later life beyond youthful age?