When Is It Too Late?

Louise Nevelson would not have become "Louise Nevelson" if she had not simply begun to work. 

Long, long ago I received a catalogue for evening art classes at the High Museum in Atlanta. The cover of the catalogue was a simple quote on a newsprint background. It read:

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”

– George Eliot

The quote captivated me and rocked my world. I found it overwhelming because I believed –  though only in my early 30s – that my life was set and that I would be relegated to the misery of an office job for the rest of my life. There was no way out that I could see. I understood the term “rat race” because I felt like little more than a worthless rodent dutifully running the same course each and every day. Unlike the rat, thinking for myself only made me more miserable.

In my defense, this was still the era when people stayed in one or two jobs for their entire lives. There was no Internet, there was no social entrepreneurism, and breaking free was truly terrifying and somewhat akin to climbing Everest.

The catalogue cover stayed on my bulletin board for years before it took. But take it did. Dreams of being Walt Disney and opening my own animation studio languished as I had no money, had never animated anything, had never run a business… The “you can’t do that” list ran long.

One day, a dear friend said simply, “Start where you are.” That had never occurred to me. Without that admonition I would have researched, planned and plotted my life away without actually stepping outside of my brain. Instead, I searched for what I could do right here and now. I called the then-rundown Hughes Spalding Children’s Hospital on the fringes of downtown and asked if they would like a free mural painted. They said, “Yes” and I was on my way.

Fortunately they never asked if I had actually painted a mural before, as I had not. But, I could draw. So eventually I found myself standing in the middle of the playroom imagining my scene on the walls. I opened my first can of paint and promptly spilled most of it on the floor. At least I laughed as I rushed to clean it up before I was discovered. I had my hands dirty. I had begun.

One day, several weeks into the project I heard a rustling behind me and turned to see a little 5-year-old girl in her drab hospital nightgown (with a second gown worn backwards as a robe). She stood holding onto her IV pump, her eyes wide open with wonder. On the walls n front of her she saw what I saw in my mind. Her eyes and my friend’s simple instructions had launched the trajectory of my life up and off the chart into the stars.

I was 40. It wasn’t too late then. It isn’t too late now.