You're Never The Right Age | Fares Elhelali | TEDxAbbey Park HS Youth
Fares Elhelali, a teenage speaker, shares his personal journey of being simultaneously told he's too young to pursue ambitions and too old to not have his life figured out. Through experiences building a nonprofit and organizing a food drive, he argues that waiting for the 'right time' or 'right age' is a trap, and that taking action before feeling ready is the only path forward.
Summary
Fares Elhelali opens by describing a contradiction he personally experienced: receiving a LinkedIn comment telling him to 'stop trying so hard and just be a kid,' while simultaneously being pressured by a family friend to have his entire university future mapped out. He uses this tension to introduce his central thesis — that young people are never considered the 'right age,' always too young to be taken seriously yet too old to not have everything figured out.
Fares references a study showing 81% of young workers feel undervalued and 69% miss opportunities due to their age, establishing that this experience is systemic, not personal. He then introduces the concept of 'the gray' — the uncomfortable in-between space where most of life actually happens — arguing this is not a problem to solve but a natural state to embrace.
He recounts joining a three-year youth leadership program at age 13 as its youngest-ever member, surrounded by university students with jobs and internships. He describes experiencing imposter syndrome, citing studies that up to 70% of youth have felt they didn't belong in a room. Despite two consecutive project failures — outreach programs for seniors with amnesia and people with disabilities that received zero responses — he persisted and in his third year helped build a nonprofit that impacted over 400 middle school students through debate and public speaking.
Fares then shares a deeply personal moment during the organization of a schoolboard-wide food drive, describing a night alone in a dark room feeling invisible, watching friends socialize without him and siblings post achievements on social media. Having immigrated to Canada at age 10 without speaking English, he felt the loneliness acutely. He considered quitting, but a conversation with his mother — who asked simply 'is that what you actually want?' — pushed him to continue, not out of self-belief but out of refusal to prove his doubters right.
The food drive ultimately succeeded despite losing 8 of 12 schools to legal issues days before the event. A family's gratitude reminded him of the real impact. He uses the partial success to challenge binary thinking — success vs. failure, too young vs. too old — arguing that life doesn't fit neatly into boxes. He concludes by citing Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates as examples of people who acted before they were 'ready,' and urges his audience to stop waiting for permission that will never come.
Key Insights
- Fares argues that young people face a contradictory double standard — simultaneously told they are too young to be taken seriously in professional spaces, yet expected to have their entire life planned out, citing a study that 69% of young workers miss opportunities specifically because of their age.
- Fares claims that up to 70% of youth have experienced imposter syndrome in the past year, which he uses to reframe his own feeling of not belonging in a room of older peers as a near-universal experience rather than a personal flaw.
- Fares describes his decision to stop waiting for institutional permission after two consecutive projects received zero responses, and instead started building — directly crediting that mindset shift with enabling him to help create a nonprofit that impacted over 400 students.
- Fares contends that the obsession with 'right times' and 'right ages' is rooted in comfort — because having a designated right time provides a convenient excuse to delay action indefinitely, and that people who start 'too early' are already ahead while others wait to feel ready.
- Fares argues that his motivation to keep going during his most isolating period was not self-belief, but the refusal to validate the perception of those who saw him as 'a kid playing pretend' — framing spite and defiance as a legitimate and powerful driver of persistence.
Topics
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