Promise yourself that you will never say about yourself that famous, challenging line of Henry David Thoreau's: "Most people live lives of quiet desperation." Thoreau vowed never to live such a life. At the age of twenty-eight, he took the risk of starting to live at Walden Pond, to prove to himself and others that there were spiritual benefits in living a deliberately simple lifestyle. People still are listening to him.
You're never too young to follow your dreams.
Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook at age nineteen. Missy Franklin is a renowned swimmer, winner of four Gold Medals in the last Olympics, and she's only eighteen. Malala Yousafzai, co-winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, is seventeen, and a courageous survivor of a horrific terrorist attack on her life.
Age and disabilities don't have to destroy our capacity to be creative.
Peter Roget, who invented the Thesaurus at age seventy-three, suffered from OCD. The only thing that would calm him was making lists. He used his disability to create a book so useful that it has never been out of print.
Pianist and composer Beethoven became increasingly deaf from the age of twenty-six onward. His deafness eventually became so profound that he could no longer converse socially with others or perform as a pianist. However he accepted his deafness and continued to compose. Some of his greatest works came from the period when he composed according to his auditory memory and his knowledge of the scales.
Frank McCourt was an ordinary teacher until the age of sixty-five, when he wrote a book based on his difficult childhood, "Angela's Ashes," for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Books Critic's Circle Award.
Kathryn Joosten started out as a nurse, became a stay-at-home Mom, and watched her marriage disintegrate. She then decided to follow her dream of acting, and worked hard at it for several years. She was almost sixty when she became successful; she has won two Emmys for her work in "Desperate Housewives."
The world-famous folk artist known affectionately as "Grandma Moses" had to quit embroidering when she was seventy-six because of arthritis. Her sister suggested that she take up painting instead. The rest is history.
What do these individuals have in common that kept them from being imprisoned or constrained by their ages or disabilities?
First, they all have a strong sense of their own identities, their own uniqueness, that comes from within. They don't allow themselves to be discouraged by society's common stereotypes. They know their own inner richness.
Frank McCourt, the dedicated teacher who became an extraordinary writer describes this inner richness when he says "You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace."
Secondly, they each have a strong inner drive that gives them the endurance to work hard and persist in following their inner visions.
Beethoven, who continued composing when he was deaf, says "This is the mark of a really admirable man: steadfastness in the time of trouble."
Lastly, perhaps most importantly, they live life passionately. Malala Yousafzai, shot by the Taliban for her outspoken belief in education for girls, says "When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful....one child, one teacher, one book, one pen, can change the world."
Most of us don't have the outstanding abilities and drives that these people do. But all of us can gain hope and courage, and live more giving and fulfilled lives, by learning from them. God keeps calling all of us throughout our lives. No matter our age or our abilities or our disabilities, He gives us the grace to know ourselves, to embrace our gifts and our causes, to live with enduring passion; and to each work quietly in our own ways to change the world.