Fifty-three is not too late, the internet promises,showing photos of people who learned piano at seventy.But the internet doesn't pay your mortgageor explain to your teenagers why you'resuddenly studying for the GRE.
Starting over has topography:The cliff of the first morningwhen you wake up in the wrong life.The valley of sending resumesthat disappear into digital silence.The false summit of almost—almost the job, almost the breakthrough,almost becoming who you thought you'd be.
They say it's never too latewhile time does its honest accounting:semesters of tuition, years until retirement,the narrowing distance between nowand when your body stops cooperating.Too late for what, exactly?Too late to be twenty? Yes.Too late to undo the marriage, the career,the decade you spent becoming someoneyou don't recognize? Also yes.
But here's the atlas they don't give you:Starting over is not going back.It's going through. Through the humiliationof beginner's mind in middle age.Through the geography of maybe.Through the terrible freedomof having nothing left to losebut the lie that it's too late.
Plot your coordinates from where you actually are,not from where you should have been.