The things we leave for later
Few years back, at one of my writing retreats, a participant gave me a story.
“It isn't very good “she said quickly. “I haven't written in forty years.”
Forty years. I looked at her. Wondered what had happened in those decades. Not because she hadn't written, but because she had stopped believing she could write. Life had happened, of course.
Marriage. Kids. School runs. Ageing parents. Deadlines. Responsibilities. The small acts of care that hold families together. As I listened to her, I thought about all the things we give up.
The girl who wanted to write stories.
The young man who dreamed of opening a café.
The woman who wanted to start a business.
The traveller who kept postponing the trip.
We don't stop wanting these things. We just think there will be time later. Later is a tricky word.
It sounds reassuring. Patient. Responsible.
Years fly past fast. One day you put a dream on hold for a few months. The next twenty years have passed.
Lately I've noticed something changing. Friends in their fifties are taking courses they never took in their twenties. A neighbour is learning Arabic. Another started an online business from home. Someone I know started his PhD well into his 60's because education was unfinished.
These stories won't make headlines.
They move me more than tales of quick success.
Maybe because they're not about achievement.
They're about giving yourself permission.
Permission to start before you're ready.
Permission to be bad at something.
Permission to want more from life even when life has given you much. We live in a culture that loves youth. Ads and social media content try to convince us that our best years are behind us by forty. That one cannot achieve much after. But, as I grow older, my faith in these claims is shaking. I've met women who became more confident with every passing year, well into their late fifties. More than they were in their twenties. I've seen people find purpose after retirement. I've seen friendships grow, marriages appear from places buried for decades.
Dreams return.
Life is not a road. It's like a mountain path.
There are bends.
There are pauses.
Sometimes there are stretches where nothing happens. Then unexpectedly the view changes. The participant finished her story. Then she wrote another. Last year she sent me a message to say one of her pieces was published. I was happy for her. What stayed with me was something else she wrote. “I wish I hadn't waited this long.” I understand what she meant. Maybe there's another way to look at it. She started. And sometimes, that is the bravest thing a person can do.
The writer is an award-winning, Dubai-based author exploring themes of memory, identity and emotional truth through storytelling, and is the founder of TheWriteScene.com; Views presented are personal.
