Our timelines are individual and unique in the world for each of us.
At 43, I decided to change my life and reinvent myself, and while I decided I listened to my mother’s voice giving me advice about being a mother: “Nothing in your daughter’s life is constant.” I realized that that was also true for me, as I am her daughter. The truth is that nothing is more constant than change. That does not mean that everything I have lived and all my experience is obsolete, on the contrary, it is wisdom that I carry in my backpack and I can unpack and apply it when I need it during my trip. With every step I take, that backpack is more full with my experiences.
Don’t you think it’s wonderful that there are people who inspire us in this world? I READ texts, books, opinions, poems; LISTEN to music, opinions and voices; I SEE programs, videos and actions and I FEEL like everything recites inside my body.
Some time ago I watched a video of Jay Shetty. He calls himself “host, story teller, creator of viral content and executor of experiments”, titles that seem as interesting to me as any university degree. The video is addressed to young people telling them not to be limited by the timeline of others, that we all have our own moment to flourish. I like to think that it is a cycle and that we bloom several times during a lifetime. The first thing I did when I saw it was to send the video to my teenage daughter. It is my purpose as a mother to show her that life is full of possibilities. Then I thought, this is not only for her, it is also for me, I still have more flowers to sprout, I still have roots to keep growing. I concluded that this knowledge is useful for everyone and I decided, based on the words of Jay Shetty, to call on thinking outside the box, that we are not limited by our beliefs or those of others.
In the video the director of a school is presented to his students of the last year. And he tells them: today’s assembly is about the beginning of a journey, the beginning of the rest of your life. In two years you will all be finishing the preparation to go to university, in three years you would be studying in different places in the world, studying in the university that you have chosen. In five years you will have started your careers and many of you will be working in the best multinationals across the globe. Then you will get married and maybe you will buy a house. In the course of ten years your lives will be formed. In fifteen years you will turn thirty and from then on the path of your life will be paved. How overwhelmed! That’s when the magic happens, Jay Shetty gets up and tells the principal, that by the way it is full of good intentions for his students, that this way of thinking may fail because he knows people who graduated at 21 and did not get a job until 27, and people who graduated late at 25 and found work immediately.
Here I would like to add that learning is for a lifetime.
Never stop learning and training, I have continued to train. I am 48, finished university and a master, but the training never ends.
Jay Shetty goes on to say that he knows people who never went to college but found what they love to do at 18. And that he knows people who found work right after finishing college, but they hate what they do. Meet people who have had a sabbatical year and who found their purpose in it. Meet people who were sure what they wanted to do at 16 and changed their minds at 26. Meet people who are single with children and marriages who have had to wait eight to ten years to have children. Met people who are in a relationship but love another. Met people who love each other but are not together. And what Jay Shetty wants to tell us is that everything in our life happens according to our time, our watch, maybe we look at our friends and think they are ahead of us, even some of us feel they are behind. But we all walk with our own steps and they have their own times and clocks, like yours. Be patient, at 35 Mark Cuban was working in a bar in Dallas; J. K Rowling was 35 years old before Harry Potter was published and twelve publishers had previously rejected the book. Otega created Zara at 39; Jack Ma started Alibaba at 35; Morgan Freeman got his big chance at 52 and Steve Carell came after 40.
If you graduate from college after 25 it is still an achievement. Being happy and not married at 30 is pretty good. Starting a family after 35 is still possible. Buying a house after 40 is still great. Do not let anyone hurry you with your timeline because as Einstein said, “Not everything that has value can be counted, and not everything that can be counted has value.” Jay Shetty goes on to say that the most important thing is to create a meaningful life and to be satisfying for yourself, learn and create impact and difference in the lives of others. That will be the real success.
Although I know that in communication what you think you have understood, it is not necessarily the same as what you heard and it was not what the person wanted to say, my conclusion is that I have heard Jay Shetty say to the young people, it is that not to be limited by the timeline of others. That life goes around in circles and there is no right way, not a right time to do everything. And to that I join, and I want to add that it is relevant to listen and learn this at any age, at any stage of life. As my mother said “nothing is constant in the lives of our children” and we are all someone’s children, so it is applicable to everyone.
Have a fantastic weekend, and don’t forget that being kind is free,
Ivalo
Here the video, in case you want to see it