Meet the 'Late Bloomer'

     Compared to other plants, this is a late bloomer. This agave americana was a squatty thing for several decades before it suddenly shot up and burst into outrageous yellow flowers. But it doesn’t blossom until its internal resources tell it to, which is good news for those of us who feel like we’re still squatty plants while our peers have shot ahead of us.     
     Most of us don’t really “take off” until the second half of our lives because our intelligence doesn’t fully develop until we reach our thirties to fifties, says author Rick Karlgaard. That seems to be true with our skills, too. Take, for instance, actor Morgan Freeman, who didn’t achieve name recognition until his early fifties and he’s still going strong in his eighties. Or Abraham Lincoln, who had more failures than successes until he was elected president in his early fifties. Or Julia Child, a failed author until she co-published her book on French cooking when she was forty-nine.
     Karlgaard, who wrote “Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement,” says flourishing “is all about finding that perfect intersection of your deepest talents and your deepest passions.” This can happen multiple times in our lives because we live longer these days.     
     That’s been true for me: one metamorphosis after another as I dared to allow my God-given passions mingle with talents I worked to develop.     
​     What about you? What passion do you want to develop?