Does Our Potential Ever Expire?

There's a little girl in a pink dress, skipping through the park below my eighteenth-storey flat. She's about six years old. Beyond her, out to the horizon, the clouds have conspired into a matted darkness, leaving only a sliver of space for the sun to slide through, splaying it's rays through the distant rain. It's clearly a wet Sunday afternoon on the other side of London, but the little girl is oblivious, as she skips along the park's path.

Then there's me. Sitting on my balcony, on the 18th floor, wondering about this little girl and her potential. Surely, in this moment of time, in this modern day, there is nothing she couldn't do, or be. I was her once. I must have been.

Now, I am weeks away from my 35th birthday, nestled in the midst of mediocrity, feeling pretty lost and lamenting whether or not my potential has expired.

Potential is a word I know well. I have heard an infinite number of times from teachers, lecturers, family, friends. I still hear it now. Friends of mine, who have managed to level their feet on higher rungs, constantly say they don't know why I'm not more successful. They don't say it with malice. They say it at times (usually after we've emptied several glasses) when I have become morose and hard on my self and lost, and they say it as a way to motivate me, and to resurrect my flagging self-belief. Everytime I hear it, I wonder the same thing myself. Why haven't I achieved more?

It's hard to know when my fear of success became so acute. Even harder to know how to change the thought patterns of a lifetime. Somewhere between being the girl in the pink dress skipping through the park and a (nearly) 35 year old daydreamer watching her, I learnt that it was much safer to keep my 'potential' locked away, like a private treasure, than to attempt to unravel it and to fall short, or worse, achieve.

But now, after all that time, I am starting to feel differently. I am starting to feel I can get there, and I might just be ready to engage my potential. Is it too late?