When I was four, my family moved from Venezuela – where we were all born – to Boston, Massachusetts. My mom, Iginia Alamo, was ecstatic to live in a latitude where she could pursue a long-held dream: to alpine ski. She promptly packed all five kids in her Chevy Malibu and headed to the mountains. She was almost 40 when she clicked into ski bindings and made her first shaky turn on a slippery slope. It was an act of defiance. The prevailing counsel was that middle-aged women should not take on a sport known to crack bones.

My mom’s willingness to engage in age-inappropriate behavior, however, allowed her to glide between snowy aspens, sip hot chocolate in Rocky Mountain lodges half-way up 14,000-foot peaks and create precious winter memories with her children. What about the risk of breaking a leg? Well, that happened. It’s why she skied for many years proudly wearing a “Broken Bone Club” pin.

Unlike my mom, many of us forgo our dreams because we consider them age inappropriate. At 20, we don’t ask grandma to teach us how to make her scrumptious plum jam because “a young person canning is weird.” At 35, we forgo our calling to become a cartoon artist because “I should have learned to draw in high school.” At 50, we don’t apply to medical school because “I’ll be twice as old as my classmates.”

I’m not saying we can, or should, always do what calls us. Admittedly, it’s ill-advised to ski if we have severe osteoporosis, to pursue a cartoonist career if it creates food insecurity for our children or to start eight years of medical training if we’ve already exceeded our life expectancy by 10. But let’s be clear: health, finances and the near impossibility of completion are the logical reasons to ditch these dreams. Age is, at best, loosely related to these factors. It’s not a proxy for them. Many 40-year olds can learn to ski with only modest health risks. Similarly, many 35-year olds can afford a career pivot.

Would our shoe size ever stop us from pursuing an interest? Why, then, should the number of candles on our birthday cake? Age is merely another societal construct. It needn’t constrict our dreams and impoverish our lives.

Next time we think we’re too young or too old to follow a dream, we owe it to ourselves to ask, “Is there a valid reason to give this up?” We might be surprised how often the answer is “heck, no!”

PS: My mom was magnificent. If you’re curious, check out her obituary.