I believe that a person always retains the chance — or at least the possibility — of catching up with everything they miss or forget, except for that one dream: the dream over whose threads they are not the sole master, or the dream they keep postponing in the belief that the day will surely come when they will realise it — or so they think. Then time passes, the threads slip away, circumstances change, life grows harder, and life's openings narrow around you. You stand there with that dream within eyeshot, yet your hand cannot reach it. Something stands between you and it — an invisible barrier, a phantom wall that no one else can see. The longer you stare at it, the more clearly you understand where you have ended up and where the dream has gone. In that moment, you can quite simply weep.
Those who walk away from arenas, from races, from great careers having deferred dreams that are all they have left — yet never fulfilled them — placed too much trust in themselves and in time. But time belongs to no one and is controlled by no one. Time is a roaring river surging ever forward toward its estuary; it stops for no one and never turns back, no matter how hard one tries. Time is a river that cannot be bribed or bargained with over its eternal laws. You cannot live it twice — like a river into which you can step only once.
It is an extraordinarily harsh moment when we arrive at that truth: the matter between us and the dream seems as close as two bow-lengths away, yet it is as far as the sky is from the earth — distant, impossible, crushing, and searing. That is why the golden piece of advice — one we know no one heeds, yet which we must offer as a lifetime's conclusion — is this: do not defer your dream. Do not make it the last item on your wish list. Do not imagine you have the power to negotiate with time, with circumstances, or with people. Be like a wily, cunning player: slip through, shoot the ball of your dream into the net of time, and move on. Be the one who scores the goal, be the one who owns the dream — but do not pride yourself on being a skilled negotiator.
Those who spent their lives and careers sitting on the substitutes' bench were rarely given a second chance to step onto the pitch. They remained watching the match — watching life — pass before their eyes, without the power or the opportunity to try again. Because there is no second attempt once you have left the game.