Life is an incredible journey.
It comes with the big responsibility of raising a family, working on a job, and at the same time navigating the ups and downs that come side by side with these responsibilities.
Beyond all these, there are often dreams that stay at the backseat of our life, untouched and unrealized, because of the demands and priorities of daily life that must come first.
Before we know it days, months, and years have passed by.
We have grown in age.
Then we remember the dream that we have put on hold in place of the priorities of life.
We think it’s too late to fulfill our dream.
We think we’re now too told to fulfill our dream.
Do you relate?
I do.
Here’s my story.
The Realization
Sometime in July 2016, I accompanied my son, who just graduated from High School to a job interview at a clothing store in Maryland.
He has a friend already working at the said store and he assured my son he’d back him up on his job application.
This was my son’s first job interview. His first opportunity to interact in the real world.
While waiting for him inside the store, I whiled away my time inspecting the countless beautiful apparels surrounding me.
I started to pull out some that I wanted to take home with me.
Then a female voice came on from the store’s loudspeaker system.
“Attention valued customer,” the female voice announced.
“Today is senior appreciation day. If you are 55 and over, we are happy to inform you that we are giving you a 30 percent discount on all your total purchases today . . .”
The word discount (not so for the word seniors) quickened my heartbeat.
I want that discount.
I wondered if I qualified.
I stopped in my track and reconsidered the speaker’s instruction.
“If you are 55 and over . . . ”
I’m not actually sure anymore how old I am now! I thought to myself.
Then, the realization struck.
OMG! I am 56 years old now and . . . ”
Realizing the passing of years made me remember one important thing that I have long held in my heart.
“ . . . I am still dreaming my dream!”
The dream of becoming a writer.
At this moment my son appeared. And he wouldn’t want to stay further in the store. So, we left. I hadn’t purchased anything.
Wake up Call
That experience woke me up. From my slumber. I was now in my 50s – 56 to be exact – and I was still dreaming the dream that I had had since I was sixteen years old, and perhaps even younger.
I was still dreaming of becoming a writer.
For the first time, I felt frustrated. Frustrated about not having become the person that I wanted to become until this moment in my life.
I had been content and rested in my sweet dream of becoming a writer but never really did anything about it.
Until I realized that days and years had passed by and I was still dreaming the same dream I had over 50 years ago.
The only writing-related stuff I had done was to read and read and read about writing but did not actually write.
I read anything about writing desiring to perfectly write one day.
My mind was obsessed with perfection. I wanted to put out perfect writings into the world — even before doing any of that perfect writing at all.
What I Discovered About Fulfilling a Dream
The disappointment and frustration I felt from that realization led me to discover something.
God started to talk to me, I believe.
Or perhaps, He led me to this discovery.
That fulfilling a dream doesn’t have to do anything with how old you are.
I discovered that when you are in your 50s, 60s or even 70s and you think you are old enough to fulfill your still unfulfilled dream, or better yet, to accomplish God’s call on your life – you are wrong!
Some Thoughts About Dreams
Dreams belong to the spiritual realm.
They are given to us by our Father in heaven in Spirit.
First and foremost, our dreams are God’s own dreams for us.
God planted our dream or dreams in our heart so that we will know the dreams He has for us and discover our ultimate purpose in life.
God Himself will train us, mold us and led us into fulfilling that dream.
It may take 50, 60, or 70 years on you in God’s timetable.
But that doesn’t matter since fifty years or so may just be one day for our Father in heaven.
In the spiritual realm, there is no time and age.
So don’t worry if you are 50, 60, or 70 years old and have not yet achieved your dream.
Just continue to keep and nurture that dream in your heart and keep on working and moving forward doing things that would potentially propel you to achieving and living your dream.
Know that on your journey towards fulfilling your dream God journeys with you.
The trick – don’t get lost. Stay close to God’s side.
There is no Age Limit to Fulfilling a Dream
Consider the late-blooming writers who wrote their first novels in their 50s (or in their golden years), consider the business professionals who launched successful businesses after retiring from the corporate world.
Their life experiences, the resilience they have cultivated, and the wisdom they have attained over the years have become the fuel that propelled them to achieve a great dream.
In many cases it was in their advanced years that they attained the clarity and determination needed to surmount obstacles to achieving their dream.
Stories of People Who Achieved their Dreams and Pursued their Life’s Calling, or Purpose, Late in Life
Some of our forebears who accomplished their dreams, or life’s calling, late in their life should make us ponder the wisdom and treasure of an advanced age.
This should be the prime of life, the time where you have become fully you (as God created you to be), who would now be fully capable of achieving what could be unachievable at an earlier age.
Yet many of those who have advanced in age have put themselves in a place of insignificance. They think they matter less now. They started to draw back. As if their life is finished.
It is said that the youth are the hope of the future.
Yet, many of our young adults nowadays who when they reach 25 or 30 years old, they start to think they’re already old.
The following people should tell us there is treasure in becoming advanced in age and we shouldn’t miss this treasure. It is the time to claim our promised land – our dream.
Abraham and Sarah
Abraham and Sarah have been childless, Sarah being unable to have a child.
In the prime of their lives, they received God’s promise that they would bear a child, and that Abraham would be a father to many nations.
But this promise did not happen.
In fact Abraham and Sarah thought it would never happen anymore since years are passing and they were getting old.
Finally, God visited them (three divine persons came to Abraham’s tent) and told him “same time next year a son would be born to them.”
Sarah who was listening secretly could not contain herself by what she heard and laughed aloud.
She laughed because she and Abraham were old to bear a child.
But true to God’s word, Isaac was born to them in the year that followed.
Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah 90 when Isaac was born.
From this lineage came Jesus Christ, the Messiah.
Moses
Moses was 80 years old when he led the Israelites out of slavery from Egypt to Canaan, the promised land.
His story, which began as a newborn Israelite who escaped death per the order of Egyptian pharaoh to drown all baby boys in the Nile River when his mother put him in a basket and set him out in the river.
The Egyptian princes heard his cry when he was inside the basket floating in the river and she adopted him as her own child.
When he was 40 years old, he witnessed an Egyptian beating an Israelite man severely and he killed the Egyptian.
He then fled to avoid repercussion from the Egyptian pharaoh.
He spent 40 years of his life in Midian.
While in Midian, God appeared to him in a burning bush and ordered him to free the Israelites from the bondage in Egypt.
He was 80 years old.
And so at 80 years old, Moses led the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan, the land of milk and honey that God promised to give to his people Israel.
Caleb
Caleb was one of the 12 spies that Moses sent to the land of Canaan, the promised land.
While the 10 other spies brought bad reports about what they found in Canaan, Caleb along with Joshua (the other one of the 12 spies who would later succeed the leadership of Moses), thought otherwise.
Caleb quieted those who brought bad reports before Moses, saying: “Let us go up at once, and occupy it; for we are well able to overcome it.”
Years after (after 40 years), when those who feared and objected to entering Canaan all passed away, Joshua now leading the Jewish tribe after Moses, commissioned Caleb as one of two spies to scout out the city of Jericho, their first point of attack before invading and occupying the promised land.
Caleb was now 85 years old, and he along with his companion, succeeded in that mission.
At 85 years old, Caleb entered the strong and fortified city of Jericho.
At 85 years old Caleb claimed the fight for the portion of his reward, which Moses had promised him beforehand.
“. . . and now, lo, I am this day eighty-five years old. I am still as strong to this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war, and for going and coming. So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day; for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities; it may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out as the Lord said.”
- Joshua 14:10-12
And Caleb succeeded in taking the land from the Anakim and got the portion of his reward.
He was 85 years old.
These examples are ancient, you may say.
But these are real examples of how far, and what great achievement, people can attain in the later years of life.
20th and 21st Century Late Achievers
Of course, we also have contemporaries who gained success late in life. The most popular of them was Colonel Sanders, the found of KFC.
Colonel Harland Sanders
Sanders had been in and out of business. He went from failure to failure both in personal and financial life.
Financial relates to failure in business undertakings, and a dream he had long kept in his heart.
Having opened and run businesses that failed Sanders retired and sustained a government pension.
But Sanders didn’t sit around following his retirement.
In his 50s he started hitting the road and went from restaurants to restaurants seeking to partner with someone who would help him promote his fried chicken recipe.
His early travelling venture failed miserably, and he was turned down 1009 times.
But at age 62, Sanders finally succeeded, and francised his first Kentucky Fried Chicken.
At age 65, he established the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain of restaurants.
Nine years and 600 KFC restaurant chains later across the US and Canada Sanders was approached by venture capitalists wishing to buy his restaurants.
He was reluctant at first, but at 75 years old he decided it would be best to let his company grow beyond his own capacity.
He then agreed to sell his share for $2 million ($15 million by 2015 in equivalent) and he would have a lifetime salary of $75,000, a seat on the board, majority ownership of KFC’s Canadian franchises, and he would serve as the company’s brand ambassador.
Sanders story is an example of how a man in his late age can fulfill his dream and attain massive success.
It’s never late to fulfill your dream no matter at what age you start.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Ingalls began scribbling stories in her 40s (while working as a dressmaker) but never seen a positive outcome on this endeavor during this time.
In her 60s she started writing the Little House books.
It was while writing these books that she started to gain a following.
At 65 years old, her book “Little House on the Prairie,” became popular and was made into a television series.
Her success as an author, an endeavor she started in her 40s, finally came when she was 65 years old.
Fauja Singh
As a child Singh had a disorder that made him unable to walk until the age of five.
But at age 89, Singh ran in the marathon.
He became the first 100-year-old to run a marathon in 2011.
He also became an Olympic torch bearer on two occasions, once at the age of 101, breaking several running records in his age category.
Julia Child
Julia Child couldn’t cook when she graduated college.
However, she fell in love with the French cuisine and started cooking French recipes when she could.
At age 50 She wrote her first cookbook and gained a reputation as one of the top French chefs in the world.
She eventually became the first woman inducted into the Culinary Institute Hall of Fame.
Grandma Moses
Grandma Moses never had a true education. She only briefly attended a one-room schoolroom.
But when she reached her 60s, she picked up her brush.
It would take another decade for her work to get noticed.
When they did, she ended up having her paintings displayed at the Museum of Modern Art.
By the age of 101, she produced about 1500 pieces.
John Fenn
Fenn landed at Princeton University following his first academic appointment at 35 years old.
He did research and published for years but with little to no success.
He was forced to retire at the age of 70 but soon after his forced retirement a paper he published at 67 got noticed.
And he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for creating a way to measure ribosomes and viruses, a method found in every lab today.
He was in his mid-80s when he received said Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Nelson Mandela
Mandela joined the activist movement in his country in South Africa when he was in his 40s.
He was arrested several times and later spent 27 years in prison. While in prison he studied Law.
When released from prison, he continued speaking out against racial segregation.
At age 76 he was elected first president of South Africa, becoming the first Black head of state, from 1944 to 1999.
Final Thoughts
As the above examples showed, it is never too late to fulfill your dream at an advanced age, and no matter how long they have remained dormant in your life.
Hopefully, those examples will encourage you to not give up on your dreams, especially when you’re tempted to think that you’re too old to fulfill them.
For you’re never too old to fulfill your unfulfilled dream.
There is a Jewish tradition that says, “one cannot begin to understand true wisdom concerning the things of God until he or she reaches 60 years old.”
It’s the same with regards to fulfilling your dream.
You are bound to fulfill your dream, if you haven’t yet, when you enter the age of 60.
Just stay close to God – the Creator and the One who wrote your dream in your heart.
With that being said – I re stress the fact that God knows the way to your dream and He will bring you there.
