Are you done or are you just starting?
I think those are interesting questions for us to ask ourselves at any stage or point in our lives. When you were in elementary school and you were asked those questions, you would have no difficulty answering, but as we grow older, the answers to the questions may not come as quickly.
If you are 30 years old, you may think that you have not yet found yourself or what you want to do so it may feel that you haven’t even started on what you wanted to be or who you wanted to become in this life. If you are 50 years old, you may think I don’t have much time left, and so the answers to those questions may feel more urgent to you now.
If you are 70 years old, you may examine your life and find some sense of satisfaction in what you’ve done, but then you notice an uneasy feeling that maybe there was more, or may there is still more because you’re still alive.
What I have come to understand through my life and that of thousand with whom I’ve worked that the age you are has little to do with the answers you may find to those questions. When I was 18, I thought I was not where I should have been, but also had no means of measuring or assessing that opinion I had created. At 30 you might have thought the same thing, and then found yourself still pondering those questions in your seventies or eighties as I have experienced with so many.
The conclusion I’ve come to and the one that causes me to experience the most joy, excitement, and enthusiasm in my life is when I recognize I will never stop wanting to do more. So it is natural that I might think I’m not where I’m supposed to be because as long as I’m alive, I’m still going there and whatever I find will be more than what I know now. If you can embrace those concepts, you will stop derailing yourself by thinking you should be somewhere other than where you are. If you are making the most of now, you will never regret later.
