Life is a learning curve. You start as a helpless baby unable to walk and talk. You go to school, you learn your trade. If you enjoy the academic world, you might carry on after school and go to university for 3 years. You come out of the education system at 21years old then, having spent around 16 years in a learning establishment. The hardiest might go on for a 2nd degree but this is where the water becomes murky.
Educational steps
When do you leave this cocooned world? When do you go out there in the real world to earn a living for yourself? University studies are not compulsory, in fact, continuing at school after 16 in the UK is not compulsory but advisable. If you go on to university, do a first degree and then a second, when do you stop? Is the second degree really going to be useful or are you delaying the inevitable – that of going out there and earning a living?
After finishing a degree, shouldn’t one be expected to get a job and settle down? Find a partner, get married and start a family? Move on to the next logical steps in the learning curve? It is now about learning responsibilities, learning about parenthood and then passing down to your children that experience in life that you have accumulated and that was passed down to you in turn.
Holding on to the past
Too many people out there are just grown-up children; kiddults is the new term. Some have no priorities and go where the wind blows them. They finish university, hang out with a partner for a while, party all over the place, move from job to job and when they get close to their 30s, they decide to go back to university again. They already have a first degree and instead of moving forwards, they go back to their easy, cocooned world.
When you leave university at 21, it’s great: you have your whole life ahead of you and a solid education behind you. But if you start university again when you are approaching 30, you are not progressing in your life. This is especially true if you have a spouse who is working and already supporting you financially. Your spouse may be looking ahead to the future and a family while you are looking backwards and going back to university for a second or third time instead of following the next logical step in the progression of your life.
Time is relentless
What you don’t know is that the clock is ticking. By the time you come out of university and get that ‘proper’ job, you will find out you have wasted your best years and that you are fast approaching middle age. Is that the time to start a family? Would children like to have elderly parents?
A large age gap is irreversible and sometimes means that children and parents are unable to form a close bond. The generation gap and diverging interests are just too far apart. A lack of fitness at an advanced age also translates into an inability to play sports with your children and have fun with them, leaving you sitting on the sidelines. By the time you retire, your kids will just be starting out in life as an adult and you may well never see your grandchildren.
Don’t delay what you can have now. Life can pass you by and then one day you will suddenly realize you have accomplished nothing in your life. Act now. You only have one life to live.
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