“How did it get so late so soon?” Says Dr Seuss.
Time is always tricky when it comes to fulfilling rather short or long term goals. We tend to let things slide due to laziness, overwhelm or just a touch of boredom. I often ask myself many questions about how I failed to get things done on time or meet them early enough to quickly kill off the interest and end up quitting. “How did it get so late so soon?” Says Dr Seuss, an interogation tha could lead to a potential maze of thoughts, but, let’s comeback to this question later on.
I’d like to believe that my life is constantly at a never ending change, a crossroad from which I leap from a journey to another. It goes something like this: as I am sure many of us are familiar with the myth that says “our body changes completely each ‘give or take’ seven to ten years”.
Well, when I was young, I used to be a carefree child, and like any other, I played a lot with everybody, chatted a lot ‘using strong language from time to another’, shared things and emotions faught as well…, until one day, I was playing outside with a bunch of childhood friends and out of nowhere, I got hit by a ball in the face. As I remember at that time, my noze gushed of blood like a river and the adrenaline stoped the pain out of shock i guess.
I remember from that moment I was paralysed not physically but mentally ‘sort of a crippling blockage’. I retrieved from not playing outside anymore or doing any physical activity, except sports at school which was safe enough for me to love along with the computer games’ interest that I developed. The same interest that made me a complete introvert. Even my Friends thought that was different and asked many questions of why i don’t come out to play anymore.
That was the first phase, the first change.
By the time I reached college and high school, I developed another crush on books, vintage and first editions. Books I found completely abandonned and dusted from the street sidewalk dust flying in the air. As I took them and gave them shelter i love that smell of oldies.
I remained a good student with good grades but one thing was a setback of me having a normal life was the fact that I was too skinny, yet I had a huge passion for photography. I loved taking pictures of people and making them feel special. That was my second change and nothing interesting happened so far, until I got to university.
In fact, this period was my insuperable change so far. I landed my first teaching job while studying and as a young teacher, other schools heard of me. In a Small town, words travel faster than wind. Aat that Time, I had many offers back then. So I worked and had the highest peak of success so far in my life. It is also at the same period that I made many mistakes in dealing with people at work and most importantly living comfortably enough to blind myself from preparing for the future.
At the age of 23 I felt the need to change the scenery and get out of my comfort zone. I remember with the help of teaching and the military scenery my introvert started to fade away. I still kept doing well in my life ‘at least I thought so’, until I started to feed my many interests at the expense of my normal rate. I got into many debts and enrolled into many trainings that I felt were necessary for my career, while I could have finished them on time or at least slowed down the pace.
So as of recently I asked myself, how did it get so late so soon? I crippled myself and my mind and wasted time doing the bare minimum. That’s why, I started picking myself up bits by bits, getting my life puzzle back together. I started prioritising what was urgent and necessary to get it over with, and postponed what looked like had enough time for another time. Yet those plans gave no space for anything else, no relationship no extra activities, even those books I had piled up and boxed away, didn’t have the chance to be read.
So this year, I started to feel a different breeze, because if I didn’t retire for a while and took time to see what is in front of me, I would still be making the same mistake all over. I urge each and every one to step back from time to time, to revise the objective of their long term goals and avoid turning their life project at the eleventh hour, because, I believe at a certain point, it is better late than never, but you can avoid all that by respecting time and getting things on the right track.
By Mr. Salah
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