Futility is a man's deepest fear.
Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 12:00AM 
Image-courtesy Kansas' "Leftoverture" album coverFutility plagues a man’s life more than anything else:
“My life is of little consequence. My best efforts are in vain. I will be an obscure footnote in History's appendix. I long for significance, but suspect my efforts are a pebble's drop into a dark, hollow well. My life will be a long testimony to failure.”
It is the lament of the writer of Ecclesiastes:
"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher...There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow." - Eccl. 1:1, 11
We’ve come to expect that breakthrough comes soon and comes at a younger age. We’ve looked to the exceptions to give us our timeline: Citizen Kane, Orson Well’s masterpiece was written at age twenty-five. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 was composed when he was twenty-one. Many of Picasso’s most celebrated paintings were done in his twenties. [What the Dog Saw, Malcom Gladwell]
However, as David Galenson, who has studied our assumptions about creativity points out, there are many other cases in which genius peaked much later: Robert Frost wrote 42 percent of his anthologized poems after turning fifty. Alfred Hitchcock directed his films, “Rear Window,” “Psycho” and “Virtigo” between the ages of fifty-four and sixty-one. Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn was published when he was forty-nine, and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe at fifty-eight. The master painter, Cezanne’s, finest work was done in his senior years. [What the Dog Saw, Malcom Gladwell]
Malcom Gladwell calls those who peak later in life, “late bloomers.” [What the Dog Saw] For me, it offers an antidote to a man’s fear that his life won't amount to much: breakthrough is a slow bang. It is a long fuse that culminates in vivid splendor only after it has burned that slow, steady, coil upon tedious coil of fuse.
But note: the fuse still gives off spark and light at each moment leading up to the bang.
Reader Comments (3)
very well,All things in their being are good for something.-Panerai Power Reserve / GMT Swiss watches replicasExperience without learning is better than learning without experience.
It gives hope that success can come at any age, as long as we don't then start thinking that this is great excuse to keep putting things off until tomorrow
Hi Helen. Absolutely. Our best years are ahead of us.