Make a difference: Never too late to change our lives

opportunity to speak blessings into my life, my family, my work and everything that I set my mind to do.
In our conversation I took time to share with him some of my dreams and desires and how I sometimes felt them slipping through my fingers. I think some of you dear readers can identify with what I am saying.
There are times in life that we have big dreams that require huge investments in terms of time, new skills and other resources and yet age is not on our side.
Sometimes we ask ourselves whether that kind of investment is worthy it or if we do not ask these questions other people will. They wonder why we are not leaving such things for our children to do. Yes, it might make sense where there are limited resources but what we need to know is that each one of us has a mission to fulfil.
I have heard people say that age is just a number and you are as young as you feel. I understand that the Ndebele people have an adage that says “getting old is a choice.” Since I am away from the people who help me with my Ndebele spellings and pronunciations I will just end with the English equivalent to avoid embarrassing mistakes.
Sometimes when I get together with friends we laugh about our aging experiences.
We also discuss our ambitions and encourage each other that it is never too late to turn our lives around. If the biblical Abraham could have a child at 100 years then it is true that age does not stifle dreams.
In his response my friend reminded me of a scripture that says “In his heart a man plans his course but the Lord determines his steps.” He went on to encourage me to trust God’s timing since a thousand years can be a day to him.
I was grateful for such advice because it changed the course of the day. Instead of brooding over missed opportunities, failures and perhaps also celebrating successes I chose to be thankful for the gift of life.
I think spending time imagining what it could have been, focusing on failures as well as celebrating success can be stumbling blocks in life.
I believe that there is nothing wrong with doing a self evaluation of our lives. This helps to move us forward as we learn from our experiences and make conscious choices to better ourselves.
Reflections can show us the ugly reality that tells how far we have gone off the mark. This can be very depressing, especially where we have ourselves to blame and also have to contend with time the factor.
I recall during my years at college there were stories of students who were said to have chewed books in the library due to examination pressure. The student would have wasted time doing things other than study and therefore ended up with a great workload. So as examinations approached the student would have to race against time and take in as much as he/she could. The result was that they lost it under pressure and ended up in hospital.
In a similar vein, reflections can cause a lot of desperation and pressure that can result in people being hopeless and/or suicidal.
I have heard stories about brilliant people who, through chasing happiness, threw their lives away. Sadly, they came to their senses when it was seemingly late.
A year or so ago I lost a nephew whom I think felt that there was no light at all at the end of the tunnel.
The life that he was leading was not reflective of his former splendour. He must have felt responsible for the way his life had turned out. I understand that some of the conversations that he had with loved ones, before he took the sad leap, were full of regret and remorse.
I think what we need to know is that while we cannot take back what has been done, we can make amends and transform our lives.
In the same way it is important to perceive failures in our lives in a way that tells us that we can make amends.
Self-evaluation should therefore be done with an open mind that gives us the impetus to go on.
Success also can stifle our development. There are some milestones that we have achieved in our lives that are a cause for celebration. We, however, need to handle these with humility as these can halt any possible progress in our lives. How, you may ask. Well, it is possible to take too much time patting ourselves on the back and thus fail to see other opportunities for further development. The sense of accomplishment can be so overwhelming to some people and they get too comfortable.
They get that sense that says you have arrived and therefore there is nowhere else to go.
Life has its fair share of challenges, regrets, failures, successes and unfulfilled dreams. This is what makes life more exciting as we work on dealing with these as they come. Challenges give us impetus to work towards dealing with these. As we work to address challenges our character is built and we become better people.
Regrets normally come as a result of choices that we make or actions that we do or not do. If not managed well a person can live in the shadow of past mistakes and failures at the expense of progress in life.
Success, on the other hand, serves as an encourager.
Success itself is a launching pad for more accomplishments through best practice. Unfulfilled dreams on the other hand give us something to work towards.
They give our lives purpose. Self-evaluation is important and we should confront the truth so we can improve ourselves for the better.
As has been said, reality is a friend.
We, however, need to be kind to ourselves and have an open mind that says it is never too late to change our lives around.