Wednesday, July 28, 2010

It Is Too Late

Several months back my son looked at a used Mitsubishi Evo and he wanted to buy it. His own money was locked in a fixed deposit. So he approached me to borrow the money. I told him I also did not have that kind of cash idling in an account. He was quite disappointed. He felt that he was going to miss an opportunity of a life time. It will be too late, when his money was available.

A month ago, my son finally bought his Evo with his own money. In his own words, this used Evo is the most beautiful he has seen, even better than the one he missed out before.

When I was leaving Malaysia to go to the UK for my engineering education, I wanted a camera. I reckoned a middle low end Fujica SLR camera was probably not too much for Dad to oblige. My elder brother told me to wait, as he could sometimes find factory seconds at much lower than street price. I told him I could not wait, it would be too late. I got the Fujica.

A year later, my brother found me a Minolta second, a high end model that I very much loved to have. I sold my Fujica.

Many parents I know, typically Asian ones, are pushing their kids to finish schools as quickly as possible, otherwise it will be too late for jobs. Then some parents discover that their kids graduate from college at the wrong time, too early perhaps, before an economic recession ends, for example.

We are always in a rush to do or get whatever we need, for fear that if we wait, it will be too late.

I learned through my own experience that we can't know a lot of what the future holds for us. We don't know if it will be really too late, until it is really too late.

Is it too late, to know that it isn't always too late?

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