Growing Out Of Season

During this past summer, a volunteer tomato plant appeared in a pot full of soil. Now, anything that expends that much energy converting from a seed to two tiny leaves on a skinny stem gets my sympathy. So I've been giving it water once in a while, encouraging it along. Of course, now that fall is nearly upon us, I will be forced to make room for it inside the house if I want to encourage its growth and eventual fruiting. (Hey! I can hope, can't I?)

So...you may ask...what does this have to do with anything? Well, it gets me thinking about late bloomers...people who don't reach their full potential until long past the period of their life that conventional thinking have determined should be "peak time."

There are many people whose “normal” follows a different pattern; sometimes there is something inside us that wants to bloom but hasn’t yet. Sometimes it’s not until midlife that one has the breathing space.  Some are like slow-boiling pots, who need time to gather wisdom and make sense of the world around them. 

Consider Linda Bach, who did not enter medical school until she was 46. She now is a doctor in private practice. http://amzn.to/S3TaSD Or what about Glady Burrill, a 90-year-old Waikiki woman preparing for her fifth consecutive marathon. http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=9314809 Charles Darwin didn't begin to write The Descent of Man until after he was 60. Grandma Moses, who took up painting in her late 70s to worldwide acclaim, continued painting into her 90s.

So...if you have a dream, something that's been nipping at your initiative, a goal you'd like to strive for but felt the time has passed...I say, go for it. It's never too late to try. Just make a start and even if you run out of time to reach the finish line, just think of the satisfaction you'll derive along the way. And what do you lose by trying?