You hear of people dying too young. You listen to stories of people who reach the end of their lives with regrets, and you wonder what went wrong.
While some were studying hard to enter a profession, others moving to different cities to find work, and yet others learning a trade or trying to build a business, there were also those who drifted. They ignored the hard work that earning a living usually requires. In their younger years they took whatever came their way and somehow believed it would carry them through into older age.
Some squandered their time on endless partying with friends, on booze and marijuana, lingering in some small coastal town with no real plan. Years pass quickly in such places. Eventually they may find themselves still living with their parents, or worse, renting a dilapidated room in the seedier parts of a city, or even slipping onto the streets.
Yet it is difficult to pass judgment. Every person lives their own life. Each of us plays the hand we are dealt and tries, in our own way, to make the best of it.
Some people, though, take their talents seriously. They study hard and build professions. I recently heard of a neurosurgeon who divides his time between South Africa and the UK, with a string of properties in the Western Cape and now investments elsewhere in Africa. One sees in such lives what can happen when discipline and ability meet opportunity. These are people who used their talents fully.
Others pursue childlike dreams deep into their twenties and thirties. Dreams can be wonderful things, but sometimes they run out. When reality finally knocks, it may be too late to change direction. The years that might have been used to build something solid have quietly slipped away.
But not everyone who changes course does so too late. Some manage to pivot. I am reminded of an artist who was represented by eight galleries. One day she sensed that things were changing in the market. She withdrew her work from the galleries and opened her own space, filling it with antique furniture and displaying her paintings in carefully composed interiors. Decorators loved it. Seeing the semi-abstract works in beautiful rooms allowed them to imagine how the art would live inside their clients’ homes. Her career revived through imagination and courage.
There are many ways people reinvent themselves. Some return to study later in life. Others learn a trade or begin again in business. Hard work, even when it begins late, still has its rewards.
I was reminded of this recently when I attended a function attended mostly by people in their senior years. What struck me was not glamour. They were dressed smartly but plainly. What stood out instead was the energy in their eyes. They were vibrant, curious, alive.
Many had retired to the coast and were now deeply involved in projects that mattered to them. In one small seaside town they were working with scientists and conservationists to protect a fragile local marine ecosystem that is under pressure. The work had clearly fired them up. It gave their days purpose.
But there was something else about them. These were people who had studied in their younger years. They had worked steadily. They had put aside money for long-term investments that could sustain them later in life. Nothing spectacular, nothing showy — just years of quiet discipline.
And now, in their later years, they were free to pursue the things that mattered to them.
Perhaps that is the quiet end goal most of us hope for. The freedom to spend our later years doing something meaningful, something that brings satisfaction, even joy.
The difficulty is that the foundations for that life are usually laid much earlier.
Youth has a way of feeling endless. The parties seem harmless, the drifting temporary, the future always far away. But the years move quickly. One day you simply arrive at your station in life — sometimes suddenly, sometimes unexpectedly — and discover that there is little time left to change direction.
Lucky breaks do happen. But most of them are made long before we realise how much they matter.
And by then, for some, the years are already gone.
Wasted, wasted years.
