You have never been so strong

A few weeks ago, my eighteen-year-old son bought his plane ticket to New Zealand for his gap year.

He’d saved for it. Worked evenings and weekends alongside college. Put money aside and made choices about what he spent.

When he finally bought that ticket, I felt enormously proud. Not just because he was going to New Zealand, but because he’d made it happen himself.

And it struck me that this moment had been eighteen years in the making.

Every bedtime story. Every scraped knee. Every argument. Every small victory. Every lesson that needed repeating, sometimes more times than I care to remember!

All those ordinary days that sometimes felt endless. And suddenly, here was this young man preparing to explore the other side of the world.

There was no shortcut. No five-step formula. No way to squeeze eighteen years of growing up into five.

And I wouldn’t have wanted one.

Watching him has made me reflect on my own life.

I’ve always associated progress with moving forward. Setting goals, making plans, getting somewhere. But the detours mattered too. The mistakes, the difficult decisions, the times when I thought I was standing still.

I wouldn’t choose to repeat all of them, but I wouldn’t be who I am without them either. Which brings me to something I’ve been thinking about lately.

You have never been so strong.

Perhaps you don’t feel particularly strong right now. Perhaps you’re tired, questioning things or wondering whether you have it in you to make another change.

But think about what you’ve already navigated. What you’ve learned. The decisions you’ve made, the problems you’ve solved and the times you’ve had to start again.

You have more experience and perspective than you’ve ever had before. Why wouldn’t you use them?

As my son prepares for his next chapter, I’m thinking about mine.

Do I love my life and what I’ve accomplished so far? Absolutely. I’m proud of my career, my family and the experiences I’ve had.

But that doesn’t mean I want the next twenty years to be a continuation of the last twenty.

There are still things I want to explore, learn and experience. And I don’t have to choose between appreciating the life I’ve built and being curious about what comes next.

Neither do you.

You’re not starting again. You’re starting from everything you’ve become.