No but seriously. Normalize finding love in your 40's. Normalize discovering and chasing new dreams in your 30's. Normalize finding yourself and your purpose in your 50's. Life doesn't end at 25. Let's stop acting like it does.
I mean, it seems pretty obvious when you put it like that, right?
But how many families, when an introvert sibling or child makes an effort to socialize, snarkily say, “So, you’ve decided to join us”?
Or when someone does something they’ve had trouble doing, say, “Why can’t you do that all the time?” (Happened to me, too often.)
Or any sentence containing the word “finally”.
If someone makes a step, a small step, in a direction you want to encourage, encourage it. Don’t complain about how it’s not enough. Don’t bring up previous stuff. Encourage it.
Because I swear to fucking god there is nothing more soul-killing, more motivation-crushing, than struggling to succeed and finding out that success and failure are both punished.