Social Time Frames

I have a strong urge to write today but I don't have a specific topic in mind. I've been thinking about one's dreams and whether there is such a thing as it being "too late" to pursue them. I don't really even know what my dreams are. I don't think that is the point of my train of thought today, although it would save me a lot of time and trouble if I knew what my dreams were.

I think the issue troubling me is the idea of there being a time limit to pursuing one's dreams. What makes it "too late" to do something? The smallest of examples is learning to play an instrument. I took up the piano, as so many children did, at around 3 or 4. I can't quite remember. I just remember the photocopied children's piano lesson book, my teacher, her house, her kids and my hatred of learning to read sheet music. I picked up the actual playing quickly; I refused - or was unable - to wrap my head around memorizing which notes lay on which lines. So I threw a fit as all little kids do and stopped going to piano lessons.

Years later, at about 16, I decided to try again. I was faced with the same problem. I had no problem playing by ear. I just could not read sheet music. One of my abhorrent habits is my dependance on being able to pick things up quickly. If it requires too much time or effort, I won't bother because my defense mechanism tells me that it isn't worth my precious brain power or that my brain doesn't function that way. Like maths or finance. If I am meant to be good at it, I'll instinctively know how to do it. So, my excuse at that point was that I was "too old" to be taking up an instrument now. At 16, I was already using the universal "it's too late" excuse.

Why is this ever an excuse though? Why does our social conditioning dictate when one is allowed to pick up a new hobby, to find their passion, to discover themselves? When a man goes out to understand his personality at 40, it is a midlife crisis. When he does the same at 21, he is embarking upon a journey of self discovery. Those are exactly the same with different labels - the former negative, the latter positive. What difference does it make? What if the 40 year old didn't have the opportunity to discover himself at 21? What if the 21 year old is just too lazy or too afraid to face the real world? Who says a journey needs to be limited to a certain stage in your life?

Today, I fear that by the time I figure out what it is I want to do with my life, it will be too late. That I will have missed my proverbial exit. That the train would have passed me by. It saddens me to think that there are countless of would-be talented people out there who did not achieve their potential because they felt they were too old to chase their dreams. Someone out there could have been the contemporary Beethoven, or another Poe, or the Adam Smith of the 21st century. But because we are molded to believe that everything has its rightful place and time, we are thusly bound by our social norms.

Maybe with the onset of a longer average human life expectancy, people will learn to extend their time frames to accommodate later self-discovery. Maybe on day we won't even have to ask the question, "isn't (s)he too old to be..." Let's hope that isn't too far off because I have a feeling I'm going to be one of those extremely late bloomers!