But I couldn’t speak my dream without a caveat. “I don’t know,” I said, “by the time I finish school I’ll be fifty.” He smiled at me. “You’re going to be fifty anyhow,” he said.
—Dr. Edith Eger
It’s hard to imagine any situation that you would describe to your kid as hopeless. “Sorry, it’s too late, you’re a failure” is something no parent would ever say. If they were falling behind their peers in math, you’d tell them that it was just a matter of work and time. If they were trying to write themselves off as a baseball player, you’d tell them about how many athletes were late bloomers, that they are still so young, that next year they can come back stronger and better, that they can turn things around. Even if they had a cancer diagnosis with terrible odds, you’d be encouraging them to fight, to never give up, to prove the doubters wrong.
You wouldn’t just be saying this. You’d mean it. Because it’s true. Nothing is fixed in this life that you haven’t fixed yourself. Nothing is permanent. Especially when the person, deep down, is good and decent and full of potential.
Okay. So why are you whispering the exact opposite of this to yourself? Telling yourself that you’ve just got to accept that your dreams are done. Telling yourself, I used to be in good shape—but that’s in the past.
No! It’s never too late. You still have so much time in front of you. So much ability, so much potential to fulfill. You decide the rest of the story. It’s up to you. But this is the important part: the story you decide for yourself is also going to determine what kind of stories your kids believe. Your story is
the compass and the map on the journey that will lead them to realism, optimism, skepticism, cynicism, or fatalism.
Which will it be?