The world belongs to late bloomers Every human can have a second act

Look around and you will see late bloomers everywhere in modern culture. David Nicholls, promoting his new novel, recently told The Times that his favourite writer is Penelope Fitzgerald, who published her first literary novel aged 62. The book that many consider to be her masterpiece, The Blue Flower, was published when she was 80. The American footballer Jalyx Hunt recently described himself as a late bloomer when talking about his acquisition by the Philadelphia Eagles after a steady rise through the ranks. Jerry Seinfeld is making his directorial debut aged 70. At this year’s Brit awards the singer Raye became the surprise star, a late-blooming sensation. And whatever you think of Joe Biden’s age, he is a symbol of a workforce that is more and more active as it gets older. Nearly one in five Americans over the age of 65 are in work — nearly double what it was 35 years ago.

This list is not supposed to make you feel like anything is possible. The self-helpists are too credulous. What these later achievements prove instead is that you do not simply wake up one day and discover that you are Toni Morrison. Late blooming is a long, hard slog. But it’s also true that we simply don’t know how many people could change things for themselves — given the opportunity, put in the right circumstances. Instead of polarising between self-help platitudes and cynical epigrams, we need a new mindset about talent, potential, and flourishing in the second half of our lives. And the pervasive spirit of this mindset must be the word “perhaps”. There is no law of late blooming. I am not presenting the biographical examples as incontrovertible, pure, or morally exceptional. What I can argue is that in all fields — including mathematics, where late blooming seems unfeasible — we underrate the potential of hidden talent. And the success stories are remarkably contingent on the chaos of the life lived. Past is prologue, not prediction.

As John Stuart Mill said, the main lesson of history is “the extraordinary susceptibility of human nature to external influences”. And it wasn’t only Eisenhower who began his second act in the midst of war. Looking at a sample of men born during the Great Depression who served throughout the Second World War and the Korean War, the sociologist Glen Elder found that men from disadvantaged backgrounds became more socially competent and had improved psychological health after military service. They also improved their occupation outcomes as a result of skills gained in the army. As well as going to college on the G.I. Bill, many army veterans completed high school and undertook craft or vocational training. The army was a bridge from one sort of life to another, often coming at a time when their prospects seemed settled. They went from being school leavers with poor prospects to veterans with the chance of a decent life. It had seemed too late to change, but it wasn’t.

For men already established in jobs and families, the military was more likely to be disruptive. But for those who were on the route to a disappointing life, military service improved their trajectory. There were many negative impacts of army service: mobilised men were more likely to divorce, particularly those who saw battle action and were in their 30s when the war started. But this goes to show the same thing — changing your life path is possible, whatever your age or current experiences. The more you change your circumstances, the more you can change yourself. In the United States, delinquent men who were given overseas service, for example, were much more likely to use training opportunities provided by the 1944 G.I. Bill. As one pair of sociologists said: “Overseas duty, which embodies radical change, provides a unique stepping stone to eventual turn-around among those stigmatized with a criminal conviction.” It changed the way people thought of them and changed the way they thought about themselves.

For a lot of people, mid-life is the time when a second act becomes possible or desirable. We find ourselves lost on the path in the middle of a dark wood, as Dante said, or in Robert Frost’s terms, life itself becomes too much like a pathless wood. In these circumstances, anyone would like to get away from earth awhile. The theory of the “happiness curve” will tell you this period of dissatisfaction is normal, biological, nothing to do with your life or your work or your lost dreams, just mere hormones. Apes have the same dips. Don’t try to get away, this theory says. Stick it out. The feeling will pass.

But not only is the data around that claim looking less and less certain, with new studies finding that the happiness curve might not exist at all, it also places everyone too neatly onto an average line. You are the person you are; you are not a statistical event. This is where self-help can be helpful. Aspiration and ambition are how we change the world. Focusing on the outlier success stories isn’t a way of selling a hollow dream to unsuspecting dupes. It’s part of a culture of aspiration of which we have become sceptical through overexposure. But while the transformation we’re too often promised is rare, change is very possible — as long as we get past culture war divides and be open to the immense range of ways an individual life can flourish.

But self-help lets us down when it comes to how we make a change in our lives. There are no simple solutions to help you leapfrog yourself into a new life. Instead, we can take some advice from a great late bloomer, Audrey Sutherland.

Sutherland was a Hawaiian kayaker. She started exploring Hawaiian coastlines in her forties, and purchased an inflatable kayak, which was mocked by more experienced (and male) explorers. But she persisted and became competent and well-regarded. Then, when Sutherland turned 60, she looked herself in the mirror and said: “Getting older, aren’t you lady? Better do the physical things now. You can work at a desk later.” She quit her job and went on her first solo exploration in Artic waters.

This was a remarkable change. Capsizing meant risk of death. Camping involved bear encounters, alone in the woods. The coastline was ragged from logging. Cabins often required repair before she could sleep in them. But for the next 20 years, into her eighties, she undertook solo kayak explorations of the Alaskan and British Columbian coast.

Sutherland used to give talks at kayaking associations. At the end, she would tell the audience to close their eyes and think about the one big thing they wanted to do with their lives if they were given $5 million dollars tomorrow. Now, she would say, open your eyes and ask yourself: “What’s stopping me?”

At one event, a man stood up and told her exactly what was stopping him. A job. A mortgage. Children. Elderly parents. A wife to support. This hardly elicited much sympathy from Sutherland, who had been a single, working, mother to four children, living on a moderate income. She replied: “Then you need to ask yourself: What part of my goal can I achieve now? What can I do now to achieve my goal later?”

That was how she did it. One step at a time. Read maps. Acquire cheap gear. Practice capsizing. Do preparatory treks in local terrain. Anything that gets you closer.

The stockbroker Chris Gardner said the same thing. He had gone from being a young black man with no degree, no connections, and no qualifications — with no access, that is, to the white, patrician finance world of the Eighties — to running his own firm. He was homeless for a short period and only got his break aged 27. For anyone who wants to be a late bloomer, he offered this most important piece of advice: “While you’re brushing your teeth, ask yourself: If tomorrow morning you could be doing anything in the world, what would it be? Second, what did you do today to make that tomorrow possible?”

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Henry Oliver is a writer. His latest book is Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life and his Substack is The Common Reader. 

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