The best time of your life

In my last article, I was scaring you a bit off by what can happen when we depend too much on the people around us, so I want to be much more positive this time. Today I just want say actually how happy I am that the times have changed for the better…

Imagine how much has changed since our mothers were our age… we are not under any pressure from the society, and we can do almost whatever we like at our age. So we are 45 or 50, our children have grown up, and we don’t have to sit by the TV knitting socks in the evening, or make the pickles on Saturdays, unless making pickles is specifically our hobby. 

We now have the time and space for everything that was only in our minds for all those years. We now have the chance to put our ideas into reality. 

The things that usually stop us in this process, however, often come from inside of ourselves – our own fears, our own wrong conclusions about our abilities, or our wrong ideas that it is too late to start something new.

For a very long time I had a feeling that I was just not good enough to go back to school. I always thought I was not clever enough, and that all the people who had a university degree must definitely be cleverer than me. When I was 40, I went to talk to a therapist about my little secret. The therapist, however, told me that my ambition was a bit ridiculous at my age and that was because I was probably going through a mid-life crisis. 

So it was official – I was ridiculous and old on top of it. A few years went by, and I heard about people who study even during their fifties. And so I finally thought – wasn’t it just irrelevant how old I was? And I made my decision – I went to school. 

Now I am getting ready to graduate, and I am proud… Steve Jobs once said that we have to stop thinking that all those people who do realize their dreams are cleverer than us. What a simple idea… but how greatly it can affect our lives.