Adulting: Significant Moments Take Time...

“I was there. I was in the crowd when President Ronald Reagan spoke in West Germany and called on Soviet President Gorbachev to ‘Tear down this wall’.” My friend’s eyes were shiny with delight when she repeated Reagan’s famous phrase. I don’t know if it was her enthusiasm, but I felt the significance of the moment and when I got home, I watched the historic speech on YouTube to somehow share that moment with her.

Time quotes Reagan’s Secretary of State, George Schultz, on that speech: “It's become famous, first of all, because what he called for happened. If you look back to the day after the speech, or the month after, I don't think it was written about that much. But it got big reverberations once the Wall came down and people looked back at Reagan's speech and remembered that it was controversial at the time to say that.”

And there I was, once again brought face to face with a gift of growing older: significant moments aren’t always significant at the moment. Sometimes we have to live a little longer, age a little more, gain a few gray hairs to allow time to further develop a moment into its intended significance and power.