“A good garden may have some weeds.” ~Thomas Fuller
Does an article about yet another twenty-something internet millionaire make you wonder where you went wrong? Does a story about a grandma who ran her first marathon at 86 make your day?
Don’t worry. If you’re a late-blooming adult, you’re not alone. You’ve got some remarkable company.
According to Wikipedia, “a late blooming adult is a person who does not discover their talents and abilities until later than normally expected.”
I’m not talking about people who started early and kept going into their 60s and beyond, like Picasso, Kurosawa or Joyce Carol Oates.
I’m tracking people who don’t realize their creative passion until later, or who discover it early but can’t pursue it until adulthood. I call them Later Bloomers.
Why are some people Later Bloomers?
I’ve identified four broad patterns. In this installment, I explore how the “rocky soil” of our youth could contribute to blooming later through:
- Lack of guidance and opportunity and
- Post-traumatic stress disorder
In the second installment, I look at two intriguing traits that many Later Bloomers share:
- Having too many passions and
- Learning by experimentation
Lack of Guidance and Opportunity
At age 10, Linda Bach witnessed her father die of a heart attack. She vowed to become a doctor so she could save other lives. At age 20, she graduated at the top of her college class with a microbiology degree.
She applied to medical school. During her entrance interview, she faced a panel of six men. Their first question – did she plan to marry and have children? “Yes,” she answered. “After I finish school and establish my practice.” One of the examiners said under his breath, “God, I’d hate to be your kids.” She didn’t get in.
Devastated, Linda asked her college counselor for advice. The counselor didn’t see a problem. Why didn’t she just want to get married and have kids?
In 1969, at age 20, Linda felt that rejection by two unimpeachable sources of authority – the review board and her counselor – had sealed her fate.
Today we can discover everything about anything via the Internet. In the past, however, we depended on parents, teachers and libraries to guide us. The quality of that guidance varied from place to place, individual to individual. For the fortunate, it lead to success. For others, like Linda, its lack slammed the door to their dreams – but not forever.
Linda Bach entered medical school at the age of 46. She is currently a doctor in private practice. Her story is told in Defying Gravity: A Celebration of Late-Blooming Women by Prill Boyle.
Some people know their path, but didn’t have the resources in youth to follow it. Lack of guidance and lack of opportunity often go hand in hand.
Do you recognize this guy? Does it matter?
Albert Einstein had an IQ of 150. Chris Langan’s IQ is so high that it can’t be measured. You’ve probably never heard of Langan because, according to I just had a chance encounter with a garden slug, and it got me thinking about time”).
But Langan will never be published in an academic journal, because he didn’t get the right credentials. Many of his would-be peers (with lower IQs) think he’s nuts.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter. He’s living his dream – a quiet life devoted to higher learning. And the Internet has become the great equalizer. One day Chris Langan’s name might be as recognizable as Albert Einstein’s.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Carl Jung wrote, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” A very brave statement, but the truth is, sometimes we do become what was done to us.
The National Institute of Health defines post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as:
an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat.
Psychotherapy recognized PTSD in the aftermath of Viet Nam. But PTSD doesn’t just affect veterans of war or victims of atrocities.
Children can develop PTSD after experiencing physical or psychological abuse or even playground bullying. PTSD symptoms can surface after learning about a traumatic experience second-hand.
The numbness, anxiety and emotional emptiness that characterize PTSD will kill the joy, passion and excitement necessary to bloom early.
My father, self-portrait, age 20
My father was a heart-breaking case in point. Before World War II, he was an animator for Walt Disney Co. They discovered him when he won a drawing contest at age 15. He dropped out of high school to work for Disney and apprenticed on Fantasia.
The Army drafted him at 20 and assigned him to a mobile photo battalion. He saw and recorded many atrocities that haunted him for the rest of this life.
Disney did not re-hire him after the war, and it broke his heart. As a high school dropout artist, it became harder and harder for him to find work. He was often unemployed. Sometimes he drank.
He passed away in 1994, a broken man who never, for the 50 years after WWII ended, engaged his passion for illustration or photography. You can see evidence of his early talent in the self-portrait at right and in his war photos.
I’m not a therapist, but I believe PTSD may be one reason why some people don’t reach their potential.
Conclusion
Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.
~A.A. Milne
In this installment, I explored the weeds that may need tending before you can bloom — lack of guidance and opportunity, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Recent media fixation on The Secret has rendered any discussion of hardship practically taboo. The “law” of attraction decrees if life doesn’t go the way you want, you must not have visualized correctly, believed hard enough or unconditionally aligned yourself with the universe.
Just what kind of law tells victims of rape, war, poverty and other tragedies that they authored their own misfortune?
If youth has left scars, being told to “move on” or “get over it” is just as insulting.You may never get over it, but the world needs your special gift. I believe that each person has one thing they must do that no one else can.
If this installment rings true to you, you may want to consult a therapist in order to cultivate your gift. Or you may not. But, no matter how thoughtful or wild, forthright or sneaky, typical or unconventional, you must find some way for your gift to triumph over what was done to you.
Next: Passions and Experimentation – Why Are Some People Later Bloomers? Part 2.
Resources, Part 1:
Boyle, Prill. Defying Gravity: A Celebration of Late-Blooming Women
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.
Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story Of Success.
Kaufman, Scott Barry. Conversations on Creativity with Daniel Tammet: Part V, Creativity, Mind, and the Brain (Psychology Today: 10/26/09).
I'm Debra Eve, proud late bloomer & possessor of many passions.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Glad you found me via GetintheHotspot. I am a late bloomer (career-wise) for a different reason. It took time to focus on something I didn’t realize was a passion: writing and promoting. Blogging has helped me discover this as well as my kids leaving for college, and having time to focus on what I want to be now. Thanks for coming over and let’s stay in touch. Sonia.
Definitely, Sonia. I’ve subscribed to your feed and look forward to your latest adventures!
I’m so with you on The Secret. I think a lot of the LOA movement does more harm than good, although I do get the basic idea that we can *choose* how to handle what comes rather than become victims to it. In Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, Susan Jeffers says we must take responsibility — but by that she simply means to empower ourselves to move forward, NOT to become *victims of ourselves* because of some perceived judgment about how we got where we did. Vicious circle, isn’t it?
Hi Sara! I think it’s easy to get caught in a negativity trap when life gets tough, and extremely hard to change one’s mindset toward the positive. But The Secret takes “you are the author of your problems” to an extreme. I agree that the LOA movement can be very damaging. These days, I try to find concentrate on the positive, but not beat myself up when I can’t change my attitude or situation right away.
Thanks so much for this post. It is exactly what I needed today. I especially liked the story of Chris Langan with the IQ ‘so high it can’t be measured’. Whenever I try to give to cut myself the tiniest bit of slack for my lack of knowledge and inability to get around certain stumbling blocks in my youth, the voice in my head always curtly reminds me that if I were smart enough, I’d have found a way. It’s encouraging to see that even someone of genius IQ couldn’t figure things out.
The ideas about ‘lack of guidance and opportunity’ are interesting as well. I’m forever beating myself up in comparison to the great men who succeeded in my fields throughout history. Most were already well on their way or ‘there’ at my age (and even a lot younger). But while they certainly deserve all the credit and recognition received, they started out with a lot of advantages I didn’t. Most were set up or at least given the tools to succeed by others at a young age. In other words, lots of guidance and opportunity. That’s not to say they didn’t face adversity or overcome challenges but there’s nothing wrong with pointing out advantages they had as well.
I also had some traumatic issues as well. However, all we ever hear about is how ‘a stronger person’ would have triumphed in spite of it. And I will triumph in the end too. But it still feels like only early achievers are valued in this society.
Hi Joe, your story is so familiar. I can’t believe someone isn’t doing serious academic research into this area. I’m just a synthesizer.
Malcolm Gladwell is the closest, but as I mention in Part 2, he basically comes up with “early achievers succeed through support; late achievers succeed through support.” But few late bloomers have the support he describes in his hallmark article.
I’m out to celebrate late bloomers — start a whole celebratory movement. We’re a huge demographic. I do find prodigies fascinating, but there’s something so rich about late blooming, about the stops and starts and the will to win through. (Like yours!) Thanks for stopping by.
Very nice article, very inspiring……
Thank you!
{ 1 trackback }