It's Never Too Late

It is never too late to be what you might have been.-George Eliot

Of all the excuses for not doing what you can, this is one of the worst. “It’s too late.” It may be too late to have the full effect, but having any effect is better than having an unintended negative effect. Because that’s what it is. You don’t do anything because you’re too old or it’s too late because you should have done it months ago if you wanted it to have any effect or it’s been so long since the “perfect time”. And then others see no one else doing anything, and they use that as their excuse. “Well, no one else was doing anything.” Good golly, I dislike that excuse, too.

There are few things which are permanent, for which there is a certain point of time when you can no longer be of help. Death is one of those things. Once a person is dead, you cannot bring them back to life. Bandages, antidotes to poisons, and pushing them out of the way of the speeding car will do them no good once they’re dead. Neither will telling them that you love them or want to read them the story or write them that letter. Death is one of the things for which there is a “too late”.

But there are so many other things for which there is no “too late”. Telling the survivors that the dearly departed was a wonderful person is something that you can do after death. It helps the survivors, not the dead, but it helps someone. It can help you, as well.

You can write that letter, you can apologize, you can tell someone you love them, and you can forgive, even for things that happened years ago or are years past what you may have thought was “too late”. Sometimes, when it’s too late for someone else, making the effort is right in time for you.

You can donate the money or food or clothing or time to the charity that needs it, even if you haven’t done so in the past several years. Even one-time donations can help quite a bit. You can go back to school and get the degree you’ve regretted never getting, even if you are 30, 40, 50, 75, whatever. Perhaps your degree won’t net you a fabulous job (since you’re past retirement age, or will be once you graduate), but you can still make use of the knowledge and serve as inspiration to others. You can learn that foreign language, take that trip, end the miserable relationship, mend the family rift that’s been going on since you were in diapers. You can do all that, or at the very least you can try. Because this excuse “It’s too late” is more about you not wanting to do something or being embarrassed about waiting, and it’ll eat inside you, the regret and the resentment and the anger and the fear of what you haven’t done. And it’ll keep you from being the whole and magnificent person you can be.

You can still be the magnificent person you were planning on being when you were a kid. You can still have the magnificent life you’ve always felt was your right, your destiny. Even if you cannot make it to its completion, your life will be better just for having started.

So many cancer victims and others who learn they have a death sentence health-wise go out and do things that they’ve always wanted to do, that they’d always planned on doing but had never gotten around to it. They realized that you can’t put off till tomorrow when you don’t have a tomorrow. Don’t make Life give you an ultimatum before you do what you need to do, what you want to do. Be who you can be, and be it now.

You are amazing, and it’s not too late to be even more magnificent still. It’s not too late. Start today.