Beech Tree News Network

My favorite comedy at the moment is The Goldbergs.  The show follows a family living in the 1980’s.  It’s almost the Wonder Years for this generation, only funnier.  Adam Goldberg is this generation’s Kevin Arnold.  A season or so ago there was an episode where Adam was afraid that he wasn’t mature enough for his girlfriend Dana.  It was unfounded at the time, as she didn’t care about that.  She was still a kid, too.  Of course, a season or so later, they grew apart after she moved. They broke up.  Can you tell I watch this show religiously?
The idea was ingrained in my brain: a column on late bloomers.  There’s nothing wrong with being a late bloomer.  Ability can take time to develop.  Very rarely does everything unfold all at once. 
"I made a decision that I wanted to be world class at something at a very young age; I just had to find that one thing that made me realize this is my arena, this is where I want to play," says Chris Gardner, founder and CEO of the stock brokerage Gardner Rich & Co.
After a childhood of brutal abuse and an early adulthood as a single parent—homeless and destitute— Gardner eventually found that arena. Seeing a red Ferrari pull into a parking lot, he approached the driver and asked him, "What do you do and how do you do it?" The answer, investment banking, turned out to be a perfect match for the math and people skills Gardner already had.
"This encounter would crystallize in my memory—almost into a mythological moment that I could return to and visit in the present tense whenever I wanted or needed its message," Gardner says in his autobiography, The Pursuit of Happyness, made into a movie starring Will Smith. (www.psychologytoday.com)
There’s nothing at all wrong with us late bloomers.  It wasn’t until college that I figured out what I wanted to do as an occupation.  The most important thing, I think, is to figure out who you are and what you want in your own time.  Don’t measure yourself against anyone else.  Their story is their story.  Your story is your story.  So what if it takes a little longer to get to an area of your life.  Takes longer than whom? That’s just it.  You’ve got to realize that it’s your life.  I promise I won’t start quoting “It’s My Life” by Bon Jovi.  I won’t even quote Billy Joel’s song “My Life”.  Now I want to listen to those songs.  I bet you do, too.