the confidence of youth

Wake up early, make new friends and have fun in nursery, pay attention and behave well in primary school, study hard in secondary school, get into university, actually attend your classes and stop staring at the pretty girl in front of you, write a dissertation longer than Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace, graduate with honors, get a job, work 9-5. Stop; breathe. Even reading that sentence tires me, but it seems that is what we are programmed to do from a young age.
I was different, I always been fascinated by travelling and was extremely keen to get out and explore the world before being 'locked' into a career. I was always worried that after settling down my adventurous days would be left behind forever. It was on one of my trips through Europe that I met a man who showed me a different perspective. I was with two friends in Keleti train station, Budapest, awaiting a train to Venice, when I sat next to an old man on a bench.
He was American, an old sailor, and boy did he have a story! He had been sailing between North and South America, many years prior to this conversation, when a typhoon had suddenly changed direction and the ship was sunk. Luckily no-one was hurt. He went back to work, around ten years later was captain of his own ship, proud as punch, until... He was sunk again, he assured me through no fault of his own! Rather than turn tail and run, he rebuilt his little empire, and eventually retired early in order to travel the world with his wife. He purchased a yacht and sailed for South America. The same thing can't happen three times, right? Wrong! The Yacht went down and they were lucky to escape alive!So having survived three typhoons, losing 3 ships and miraculously surviving, the old man finally tried a different approach. He used the money from the yacht insurance and him and his wife planned their world tour, starting with a flight to Israel.
Here I was, trying to cram as much in before real life set in, talking to the other end of the spectrum. More importantly, i was learning from it. The old man told me, "whatever your passion is, you must be willing to work for it, and you must be willing to wait for it." It doesn't take most of us a lifetime and three shipwrecks to get where we want to be, most of us have a much easier path, most of us give up too easily. Things will happen in their own time, we just need to keep our heads up and enjoy the ride, and we will end up where we should be.