#start where you are
- At age 15, Mark Wahlberg dropped out of school and lived on the streets after serving time.
- At age 18, Drew Carey attempted suicide after being expelled from college.
- At age 23, Tina Fey was working at her local YMCA.
- At age 23, Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first reporting job.
- At age 24, Stephen King was working as a janitor and living in a trailer.
- At age 24, Jon Hamm was working as a waiter.
- At 25, Walt Disney was told that no one would ever like Mickey Mouse by MGM.
- At age 27, Vincent Van Gogh failed as a missionary and went to art school.
- At age 28, J.K Rowling was a suicidal parent living on welfare.
- At age 28, Tyler Perry was homeless on the streets of Atlanta.
- At age 30, Harrison Ford was a carpenter.
- At age 30, Martha Stewart was a stock broker.
- At age 35, Ricky Gervais made it to TV after getting fired working on a radio show.
- At age 40, Vera Wang designed her first dress after failing to make the Olympic figure skating team and to make the editor-in-chief position at Vogue.
- At age 40, Stan Lee released his very first comic book.
- At age 40, Lucille Ball got her part in I Love Lucy.
- At age 42, Alan Rickman got his first major movie role.
- At age 44, Bryan Cranston got his first major TV role.
- At age 46, Samuel L. Jackson got his first major movie role.
- At age 52, Morgan Freeman got his first major movie role.
- The founder of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos, was working at McDonald’s in his 20s.
- Billionaire Warren Buffet was a part-time salesman in his 20s.
- President Barack Obama was a community organizer in his 20s.
- Halle Berry stayed in homeless shelters often in her 20s.
It is NEVER too late to achieve your dreams. Don’t stress about the future. Right here, right now, you’re doing the very best you can.
I never expected to be the kind of person who would read and re-read books by a Buddhist nun, but I’m glad I stopped being attached to any personal narrative that would have prevented me from doing that.
I’ve started Pema Chödrön Start Where You Are over again, for the fourth or fifth time (because that’s where I am), and I was just telling my friend luxlotus about one of my favorite parts, in which Chödrön emerges from an entire day of meditation and notices that someone has left dishes in the sink. Instantly she’s furious. She just knows they belong to a woman who’s been consistently selfish and inconsiderate on this retreat, always leaving things for other people to pick up, even though everybody thinks she’s so evolved, so great. Everyone’s dishes are labeled with their names, so Chödrön rushes to the counter for vindication.
“When I got to the sink,” she writes, “I looked at the plate, and the name on it was ‘Pema,’ and the name on the cup was 'Pema’ and the name on the fork was 'Pema’ and the name on the knife was 'Pema.’ It was all mine!”
She also recounts this Zen parable.
A man is enjoying himself on a river at dusk. He sees another boat coming down the river toward him. At first it seems so nice to him that someone else is also enjoying the river on a nice summer evening. Then he realizes that the boat is coming right toward him, faster and faster. He begins to get upset and starts to yell, “Hey, hey, watch out! Turn aside!” But the boat just comes faster and faster, right twoard him. By this time he’s standing up in his boat, screaming and shaking his fist, and then the boat smashes right into him. He sees that it’s an empty boat.
