You know how we always like to say that everyone has their own time for everything, and we don't always have to be compared to people our age just because they're doing better than us, because it's their time and not yet ours. Now although that might be true to an extent, we shouldn't always look at things that way.
My school's exam will be starting in a few days from now and all of the students are on edge as usual, so I found myself reminiscing about back in the day when I still was a student and how I usually handled this kind of exam stress. It was during that travel down memory lane that I had remembered a conversation I had with my dad few years ago.
It was one sunny afternoon and I was at the kitchen preparing his meal because he had just gotten back from work and I had to prepare something for him because it was just us two at home. I had finished high school two or three years prior to that time, so I was long overdue to be in the university.
While I was in the kitchen, we had started having a conversation about the university and he had made the "All of your mates will soon be graduating" statement and that had hit me in a bad way, so immediately I had reminded him everyone has their own time to do things and that there are also people my age who are also in the mortuary.
That statement made so much sense to us at that time that even he too had agreed with me and that was the end of the conversation for that day. But you see, although what I said was somewhat correct at the time, what I didn't understand then was that sometimes, there is an exact time for some things, and I don't mean it the way you're probably thinking about it.
Take for example, a young man who refused to hustle during his youth and by the time they're sixty years old, you see them hawking on the street or hustling with the younger generation when he should be somewhere resting or doing something less stressful and demanding. His youth was the exact time when he should have put in that work, but he didn't, and now he's paying the price.
This same thing happened to a friend of mine who refused to come back to finish up with his studies when we all were doing it, he had decided to take an extra year off and by the time he was back, everyone had left him behind and before he knew it, we all had graduated and he was the only one worrying about assignments, tests and all that stuff.
He ended up dropping out of school because when he was writing assignments, the rest of us were busy partying and just having the time of our lives and he wanted to join us, forgetting that we all weren't exactly at the same level anymore, academically.
We had taken care of our business at the exact time when we needed to, but he didn't. And instead of him to understand that, he still tried to move at the same pace we were moving at and that got him to drop out of school.
So yeah, while I do believe that everyone has their time for everything, we should also have it at the back of our mind that there are certain things that has to be done at a certain time and if we do decide to ignore that time, then we should be ready to face whatever extra stress or work that comes with our decision... Like the old man doing menial jobs with the younglings.