Age and time don’t matter as much as we often think when it comes to success and achieving things. Regardless of the situation, when we compare ourselves to others or compete against them, we often think, “Well, they are older than me, so they should have more experience, a higher salary, or better skills, etc.”
I used to think that way too. These thoughts started to fade away when I entered college for football. I had teammates and opponents who were much older than me. Some of them were so much older that we weren’t even in high school during the same years.
In the NFL, I played with guys who were decades older than me. Age didn’t matter. They didn’t treat me differently because I was younger, and I didn’t treat them differently because they were older. It simply didn’t matter. What mattered most was the present moment.
You might see someone making a lot of money at work and think, “They have x number of years of experience, and they are older than me.” However, that truly doesn’t matter. Our lives don’t follow the same timeline. We achieve things at various ages. We learn things at different stages of life.
Martin Luther King Jr. died at 39 years old. Imagine if he had thought he needed to be older or have more years of experience before he could begin to serve his life’s purpose and make a change. Some kids graduate from high school at the age of 13 or 14. They don’t need to wait until they are 18 like everyone else.
Whatever it is you want to do in life, know that the time is now. Patience is important, but also remember what Malcolm X once said, “No man is given but so much time to accomplish whatever is his life’s work.” So, anything you do today, consider it urgent.
FLY, BLACK BOY 