When it Comes to Life, Age Doesn’t Matter
It’s the Heart that Counts.
We deify turning twenty-one. For the young, it’s the moment of adulthood, of finally becoming of age, of being able to live an independent life. It’s a moment where you define who you are, where you have the whole world in front of you, where the only person accountable and responsible for your life is you.
For the old, it’s the stage of possibilities, where the young have the whole world in front of them, where there is so much they can do. It’s a sign of hope for the future, a sign of progress, a sign of opportunity.
It’s an important milestone in everyone’s life.
But for so many of us, we can forget one important thing.
As I approached this moment, I was pumped up. My life was going to begin, adults would treat me better, and maybe, just maybe, they would respect who I was and accept the person I wanted to be.
The day came and left. Life moved on. All the expectations fell flat. After some time I realized the sad reality: I was just the same old kid I always had been. I had the same looks, the same difficulties, the same struggles. Sure, I had entered the adult world, but there was no magical change from being twenty. It was a myth, a legend. Something was missing.
As time went on, I began to be more perceptive about the people around me, especially the adults. But it wasn’t good. Long story short, they let me down.
I grew disillusioned with the world around me. I saw people much older than me acting as if they never left high school, as if they never took their lives seriously, as if they had no meaning or purpose in life other than having fun.
Good people did exist, but interspersed among them were so many mediocre characters. I had such hopes for adulthood only to be surprised by the emptiness around me. In my mind, it made my own future bleak.
I asked myself, Is this the person, the adult that I want to be? How do I become someone who makes a difference, someone worthy of respect, someone who lives a life worth living?
My thoughts flew back.
I have a friend from when I was in high school. He was as normal as could be. We would hike in the mountains, hit the basketball court, and just hang out. After graduation, I moved out of state and we lost contact with each other. Life just carried us down separate paths.
One day, I was speaking with another friend of mine and we were recounting memories of the years. The topic of conversation happened upon our old buddy and I heard some unexpected news:
He had just gotten married.
He was only twenty and his wife was nineteen.
Shocked and intrigued, I asked how that could possibly be. In this day and age, where people seemed to wait longer and longer to tie the knot, how could one of my friends marry at such a young age? Did something happen?
No. Nothing happened. No mistake was made. He just fell in love, took the decision, and got married.
Four years have passed and he’s happily married with one kid. It wasn’t always smooth sailing. While going through college he had to work extra jobs not just to support him, but also his budding family.
Later on, I caught up with him and although he was the same guy I knew back in high school, something within him changed. He grew up and lived with a grounded sense of responsibility that I’ve never seen from someone my age. He took his life seriously and pushed himself and made things work out. He knew what he wanted and went for it.
And he taught me one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned:
In life, age doesn’t make you grow up. It’s the heart that counts.
Growing up doesn’t come from the passage of time, but from how you mold yourself into the person you want to become.
It requires a change of heart, where we take the driver’s seat, and that’s what separates the child from the adult. It takes a decision that’s renewed day in and day out to keep on moving. It takes a heart that is not moved by what one feels or what the weather is like or the specific circumstances of the day.
It’s a decision to sacrifice and give of yourself to go after what you believe.
As time went on, as I met more and more heroic people, young and old, I found this common thread. They didn’t wait for life to come to them, but they went out and sought after the life they wanted to live.
It’s only when you do that that you can be the person you dream to be.
In life, it’s not age that matters. It’s the heart that counts.
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