Just hearing the phrase late bloomer makes me feel away.

For a long time, I felt behind in life, had some expectations for how life would go, figuring out my career, getting the right opportunities, building a family.

But through every stage, it felt like I was a step behind.

In this YouTube thing, there's this new wave of young YouTubers that are super talented, super creative, who are making really cool, interesting videos.

And all the ones that are my age are retiring.

And you can't forget about marital status, you know, when peers are married, having multiple kids.

Okay, we're not going to get into this topic for this video.

Shout out to my friends who do have kids.

That being said, I do feel like being a late bloomer, it's not like a new feeling.

It's pretty universal.

I know a lot of people feel the same.

But yeah, back to the video.

There's this romantic view of how life can be.

Discovering your purpose at an early age, where every step perfectly leads into the next step.

Although there's challenges, each hurdle leads to a bigger and better opportunity.

It seems to be perfectly mapped out by all these figures that I follow and admire.

Seeing their journey of growth, we see the impact that they have.

Seeing them bloom.

And following these journeys is pretty inspirational, gives me space to hope, to dream, to see what

I didn't think was possible.

So if it happens, it happens, man.

You called it.

But the other side of that is I examine my own situation and compare where I was at their age and where I'm at my age and what they've done at their age, what I haven't done.

So we have this tendency to analyze our status when we aren't quite sure where we stand.

There's a couple variations of this.

We can compare upward or we can compare downward.

Comparing upward is when someone is perceived to be better off or further along.

Comparing downward is when someone is perceived to be worse off or lower status.

Within each, we can have a positive or negative reflection on it.

Late bloomers tend to be upward comparing with a negative reflection, leading to feelings of jealousy, envy, dissatisfaction.

What I realize is that I often oversimplify my situation, focus on the negatives.

I'm extra critical of myself.

There's so many nuances within my situation that I overlook, I ignore the complexities of my-

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Do you even believe what you're saying?

What?

Do you believe what you're saying?

Yeah, I believe.

What?

What?

No, you don't believe.

What do you mean?

You don't believe.

If you believed, you wouldn't be making a whole video about this.

Why are you doing this to me?

I'm not doing anything to you.

You're the one that's blabbering on and on about oversimplifying circumstances and nuances.

Alright, fine.

I'm processing how I'm feeling, but it doesn't mean that I don't believe what I'm saying.

You're self-psychoanalyzing why this or that is happening, but you're not addressing what's actually going on.

Okay.

Sometimes it just feels lonely.

Like I was left behind.

It's just me by myself within this reality.

I don't know.

Khan, let's go home.

The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.

My friend recently asked me, you know, if you could do it over again, would you do the same thing?

And it was hard because I feel like there's a lot of choices that I've made that have led to maybe a more difficult journey, but at the same time, because of these decisions,

I've also had a more fuller life and it's something that I wouldn't want to take back.

I think when a flower blooms, it's really obvious.

We see the transformation.

When a person blooms, it's not so obvious.

They're ever-changing, ever-forming.

It's a series of moments and experiences, but that doesn't mean they're not growing.

Sometimes you need to get knocked down before you can really figure out what your fight is.

Sometimes you need to feel the pain and sting of defeat to activate the real passion and purpose that God predestined inside of you.

I don't know what your future is, but if you're willing to take the harder way, the more complicated one, the one with more failures at first than successes, the one that has ultimately proven to have more meaning, more victory, more glory, then you will not regret it.

We all have unique adversities that we've gone through.

There are challenges that you've had that no one else can understand.

But this is part of who you are, part of what makes you special.

I know it's cliche, but the stuff you're going through, the hardships you're going through, that's what you're growing through.

As the emperor says, the flower that blooms in adversity is the most rarest and beautifulest of all.

And I guess the thing about late bloomers is that they still bloom.

What's up, guys?

If you guys made it to the end, thank you guys so much.

I appreciate you all.

It's a new channel, so please like, subscribe, drop a comment to run up the algorithm.

You know what it is.

Thank you, guys.