Remember when you were young and you had too many people telling you how to dream big, how great life could be if you studied harder, how awesome life is when you try more things, or if you put down the remote and experience life you could be all that you can be…
As you grow older you witness friends, family, and co-workers succeed and fail. You also witness those same friends and family experience unexpected challenges and overcome extraordinary circumstances while still finding the time to provide you with unsolicited feedback, such as “you can do better” or “you can be better!”
People who experience success, often, have someone in their corner or someone who bludgeoned them with messages of uninvited inspiration and may or may not have inevitably motivated them to become better, set higher goals, or simply just do something with their life.
Those “people”, who constantly tell you how to be, carry an intent to inspire and encourage, to push others to be better, to convince others to be more than they can imagine, to dream…
As humans, what makes us special is our ability to dream, to be inspired, to believe we can be better…
Along with age and physical challenges, attrition also takes place across our social circles. The voices that were once abundant and plenty, while we were younger, become less and less as we grow older.
The former voices of expectation, inspiration, and support become silent.
Which leaves us alone in the world. Independent. True adults. Your own person. What can quickly happen is reality humbles you. Your own voice is not always the most inspiring anthem to hear over and over.
What gets us off the couch, or pushes us to work harder, or believes we can when we think we can’t, or kicks us in the butt when we are high and mighty comes from the voice of those that have moved on or left us.
As we age, we begin to lose the fire, the inspiration, the chip on our shoulder because the voices are gone. They’ve moved on or we have begun to believe we are too old or too experienced to believe we need it.
We do…
As children, tweens, teens, and young adults we rush to get away from the unsolicited advice and inspirational speeches to prove to everyone and ourselves – “I got this.” On the other hand, as we “retire” and move into the golden years we slow down and realize a beautiful perspective about life. While the unsolicited advice and inspirational speeches were annoying and didn’t make sense at the time, they were nice to have. While the message may have been convoluted the messenger had good intentions.
All the while our biological clock keeps ticking and inescapably we get old and gray.
Inevitably, time gets the best of us and we tend to spend a large portion of time finding peace with unfinished business, unspoken conversations, or coming to terms with wishes we would have experienced in our life.
Which leads me to believe that we should never stop surrounding ourselves with others who expect something from us, who’s unsolicited suggestions can be inspiration to remind us that we can be better, or voices that simply piss us off and give us reason to get up and prove them wrong!
As children and young adults, we can’t wait to get away from the adult voices telling us what to do.
As adults, we don’t want to lose the remaining voices who are left to help us realize who it is we could still become!
