it is never too late to be what you might have been

Lateness assumes a timetable — one you supposedly agreed to and then missed. Nobody ever showed you that document.

People start medical school at forty-four. People learn to swim at seventy, in a public pool, in front of children who are much better at it than they are.

None of them receive a discounted version of the result for arriving when they did.

What's genuinely gone is the version where you did it early and it came easily. That door is shut. The others are unlocked and, for the most part, unattended.