It’s never too late to follow your dreams

I’m going to an art show this evening. The show will feature the paintings of two friends from my swimming group. One became an artist in a way that’s fairly typical: she studied art in college, taught it in schools, and eventually worked in the creative department of a large company. She is extremely talented. Her work is stunning.

My other friend took a different route. I knew she had been a teacher for her entire career. Frequently, her work is on display in local art shows and galleries, so based on that, I assumed she studied art in college and then went on to become an art teacher until she retired. You know what they say about “assuming.”

Trying something new based on interest

Today, I found out how wrong I was. My friend told me she was a math and science teacher in an urban school district for 30 years. When she retired at the age of 58, she decided to explore art because she’d always been interested in it. 

She signed up for a few art classes at the local community college. Then she started looking for drawing groups in the area. She found some and began showing up. She said the first couple of times, it was difficult because she realized the people in some of these groups were real artists who had been creating art most of their lives. She felt like a fraud – or at least very amateur – because this was her first foray into art. But she persevered and kept going because she enjoyed creating art. The more she kept creating, the more she honed her skills and the better her art became. 

Fast forward 15 years. She has become quite the accomplished artist. Her work is displayed in several art shows per year as well as in local galleries. She is always excited when her work sells. She says it’s still unreal to her when it does. She shouldn’t be surprised. She is extremely talented, too, and her work is quite stunning as well.

Success doesn’t care about your age

My friend is an inspiration. I love her story because it reminds me that we should pursue our dreams without getting hung up on our age, time and whether it is too late. If you look around, there are plenty of examples of people finding success later in life. 

Is the best yet to come?

In their book “The Rainbow Comes and Goes” Anderson Cooper and his mother Gloria Vanderbilt exchange a series of emails exploring many themes of life, love and loss. In one particularly poignant exchange, Vanderbilt says that hope is essential. The alternative is to stop living. Hope has energy and its own life force to make dreams come true. 

Cooper says he wishes he shared her belief. He later comments that he feels his life and career are still on the upswing, but he worries about the day when he’ll no longer have that feeling, when the best is past and he is in decline. Her responding answer is brilliant:

“Andy, the longer you live, the more brilliantly you will soar. The sky is the limit for you in whatever pursuits you choose; of this I’m certain. No need to fear “inevitable decline.” My career didn’t really start taking off big time until I launched Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. I was fifty-four. Listen to your Mamacita: you have time, lots and lots of time.”

Her career began taking off at 54. My friend’s art career didn’t begin until she was 58.

These examples give me hope that it’s never too late to follow our dreams.

My three takeaways: 

1. Believe in yourself. 
2. Enjoy what you’re pursuing. 
3. And most importantly, you have to start.

Engage with us! In the comments, share a dream you followed! (I’ll go first: Getting this blog up and running was a dream of mine. What’s one of yours? What dreams are you currently pursuing?)