The author of "Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement" was
interviewed by NPR.
‘Late Bloomers’ Review: Please Don’t Rush Me Our culture exalts youthful brilliance over mature achievement. Talent often flourishes later in life, when experience brings wisdom.
By Philip Delves Broughton
Wall Street Journal
April 29, 2019
It’s a nice idea that success can come at any point in life. You don’t have to be Mark Zuckerberg, vaulting up the rich-list rankings in his 20s, or Pete Buttigieg, running for president at 37. You can wait until you are more evolved and take what Rich Karlgaard calls, in “Late Bloomers,” the “slower walk of discovery.”
It’s a message that will doubtless be welcomed by midcareer middle managers or anyone else who feels, well into adult life, that his or her abilities have not been properly put to use or sufficiently recognized. The question, though, is whether it’s true—or at least true at any kind of scale to matter.
“A late bloomer,” Mr. Karlgaard writes, “is a person who fulfills their potential later than expected; they often have talents that aren’t visible to others initially. . . . They are not attempting to satisfy, with gritted teeth, the expectations of their parents or society, a false path that leads to burnout and brittleness, or even to depression and illness.”
These late bloomers stand in contrast to today’s obsession with precocious youth. They are not the ones acing the SAT, starting charitable organizations in their teens or emerging from college garlanded with awards. They don’t scare up millions from venture capitalists before they have bought their first suit; they don’t spend their 20s compiling pitch books at Wall Street banks. Instead, they are moseying around, figuring life out, giving their brain’s prefrontal cortex time to keep forming, which won’t happen until they are 25 at least.
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Late bloomers, Mr. Karlgaard argues, are not just people of great talent who develop later in their lives. They also possess qualities that can only be acquired through time and experience. They tend to be more curious, compassionate, resilient and wise than younger people of equal talent. This may be true, Mr. Karlgaard notes, of older people generally, who are being flushed out of the workforce much too early.
