POTENTIAL. It's Where, NOT When.

Is there a sell by date for potential?

Does Potential have a "Best Before" stamp on it? This is a question I’ve asked myself for a long time. At what point am I too old to have potential? Am I there already? What a horrible thought!

I think I may’ve seen the word “POTENTIAL” in one of my old primary school reports… but seriously, when was the last time you heard anybody refer to a 40, 50 or 60 year old as having potential? Unless of course it's in relation to lawn bowls or heart disease. So I looked up the meaning of potential.

POTENTIAL /pəˈtɛnʃəl/ Having or showing the capacity to develop into something in the future…

Well, unless we can all agree on what “the future” even looks like, that definition is really not too much help.

Another thing I discovered while researching Potential was "Aristotle’s Theory of Potentiality and Actuality". Now, I still have absolutely no idea what that dude was going on about, but one thing I did learn was that potential has far more to do with location than with youth or age. I've been worrying about the wrong thing!

EXHIBIT A: If we were to take a huge, 5 Million-Year-Old boulder and place it at the bottom of a deep valley, where the water collects and the ground is muddy and sodden, there is very little we could do to release the potential energy that boulder has. That boulder is going nowhere fast...

However... if we were to take that same 5 Million-Year-Old boulder and place it on the very edge of a cliff, teetering above the valley below, it would take just the slightest nudge to release its full power and energy - its POTENTIAL.

Valley or cliff edge? It’s all about location. Unless we provide the correct environment, the very best metaphorical location, there is no way on earth that anyone, of any age will ever reach their full potential.

You see, it's Location, not age. And that gives me hope. It should give us all hope.