Year of the Late Bloomer
There is, apparently, a book about late bloomers that just came out, which explains some of the recent posts about late bloomers. But the rest are untied to Rich Karlgaard’s book. It’s just a weird coincidence; a moment in time when people are speaking about achievement later in life.
According to a multitude of authors, being a late bloomer rocks. Charles Duhigg points out:
Late bloomers learn resilience. Early disappointments force concessions, as Duhigg notes, and they reshape expectations. It is no doubt sad that the best way to gain strength is by falling and continually bouncing back, practicing, working around obstacles. But this flexibility is critical to long-term success.
Being a late bloomer puts you in good company since all of these articles also include a list of people who have achieved great things later in life. And it saves you from all of the drawbacks of being an early bloomer that are also listed in these articles. (Because you can only prove how great being a late bloomer is by putting down early bloomers.)
I’m being sarcastic mostly because I’ve always felt like you don’t know what sort of bloomer you are until you’ve bloomed, and because we bloom in cycles, blooming in different parts of our life at different times, declaring ourselves one or the other spotlights our life with one accomplishment instead of acknowledging that we make big and small contributions to this world every day.
Though I do like Karlgaard’s explanation of the two types of forces that make people bloom at different times:
It’s the difference between feeling being pushed — which I don’t like and I think a lot of people don’t like — versus being pulled by some vision and dream and higher purpose.
Pushed vs. pulled.
2 comments
Interesting… I love your thought that we bloom in cycles. I don’t know why people feel they have to stomp on someone else’s flower to have theirs be noticed. I think it’s so weird how sometimes there is a topic that seems to be talked about by everyone all at once — like late bloomers, or all the asteroid movies that one year, or when you go to work and everyone is wearing purple (and it’s not a Spirit Day or anything).
I, too, like your take on the complexity, the cycles and arenas rather than just “early” or “late.”
Love the Duhigg take. I suppose some bloom, though, and some wither. Depending on innate resilience, perhaps.
And I have mixed feelings about pull. I always envied those who had it. Some just don’t. Again, is there something innate going on?