‘All rising to great place is by a winding stair’
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024. p.1
and
Tag: Henry Oliver
-
-
It is interesting to learn once more how much further one can go on one’s second wind. I think that it is an important lesson for everyone to learn for it should also be applied to one’s mental efforts. Most people go through life without discovering the existence of that whole field of endeavor which we describe as a second wind. Whether mentally or physically most people give up at the first appearance of exhaustion. Thus they never learn the glory and the exhilaration of genuine effort…
– Agnes Meyer
Agnes Meyer was Mrs. Graham’s mother. Mrs. Graham the former CEO of the Washington Post.
This was the valuable lesson Agnes instilled.
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024. p.3
and
Graham, Personal History, p. 40.
-
People are always speculating – why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.
– Malcolm X
X, Malcolm. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. United States, Random House Publishing Group, 2015.
and
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024. pg V
-
True genius does what it takes to succeed, which is why Michelangelo, old, tired, irritated at not being able to go home to Florence, went to a building site in Rome every day and talked to people who hated him about hauling stone and carving pillars. As well as everything else, Michelangelo turned out to be a late bloomer in the art of running a construction site. Everyone who loves architecture can still feel glad about that today.
– Henry Oliver
Even Michelangelo took on projects that he wanted to pass on. But when the Pope asks you to become the architect for the St Peter’s basilica “yes” is your only response.
Also, maybe architecture isn’t as glamorous a profession as depicted?
Read the article in it’s entirety here. It will reveal to you new sides of Michelangelo.
Oliver, Henry. “It Is Never Too Late for Greatness.” CapX, July 4, 2024. https://capx.co/it-is-never-too-late-for-greatness/.
-
“Being interested is what is scarce.”
– Tyler Cowen
I’ve listened to this podcast 5, 6 times, pulling out a new insight from each listen. It’s an excellent primer on John Stuart Mill.
Start with Autobiography. It will get you interested. And listen to the podcast in full here.
“Reading John Stuart Mill.” The Common Reader (podcast), featuring Tyler Cowen, hosted by Henry Oliver, December 11, 2023. https://www.commonreader.co.uk/p/tyler-cowen-reading-john-stuart-mill.
-
- Swim 400 yards easily
- Do dishes in a strange house, and your own
- Cook a simple meal
- See work to be done and do it
- Care for tools and always put them away after use
- Splice or put a fixture on an electric cord
- Know basic information about five careers that suit you
- Volunteer to work for a month in each of those fields
- Clean a paintbrush after use
- Change a diaper, and a tire
- Listen to an adult talk with interest and empathy
- Take initiative and responsibility for school work and home chores
- Dance with any age
- Clean a fish and dress a chicken
- Drive a car with skill and sanity
- Know and take responsibility for sexual conception and protection when needed
- Know the basic five of first aid: restore breathing and heartbeat, control bleeding, dilute poisons, immobilize fractures, treat for shock
- Write a business letter
- Spend the family income for all bills and necessities for two months
- Know basic auto mechanics and simple repair
- Find your way across a strange city using public transportation
- Be happy and comfortable alone for ten days, ten miles from the nearest other person
- Save someone drowning using available equipment
- Find a paying job and hold it for a month
- Read at a tenth grade level
- Read a topographic map and a chart
- Know the local drug scene for yourself
- Handle a boat safely and competently (canoe, kayak, skiff, sailboat)
- Operate a sewing machine and mend your own clothes
- Operate a computer as needed
- Do your own laundry
What would you add to this list? What would you strike out?
Any here you feel are un-reasonable?
Patagonia. “Go Simple, Go Solo, Go Now: The Life of Audrey Sutherland.” Patagonia. Accessed June 2, 2024. https://www.patagonia.com/stories/go-simple-go-solo-go-now-the-life-of-audrey-sutherland/story-17793.html.
-
‘Close your eyes. Sit very quietly for a minute. Imagine that you were just given five million dollars. Now think what you would do if you had that five million dollars.’ After a pause, she would say, ‘I want you to open your eyes and think what is stopping you from doing those same things without the five million.’
Go ahead. Close your eyes.
What would you do? What fear is holding you back?
The Audrey Sutherland: live immediately chapter inspires.
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024. pg 223 of the Kindle Edition
-
Johnson learned wherever he went. On a visit to an army camp in 1778, when he was nearly sixty, he enquired about many aspects of military practice, including the weight of musket balls, and the range at which they could be effective. He displayed a good knowledge of gunpowder, talked on a range of military topics, and sat up late watching a court martial. The inventor Richard Arkwright said Johnson was the only person who, on first view, ‘understood the principal and powers of his most complicated piece of machinery’. He had been advised by his cousin Cornelius Ford, with whom he spent some formative months as a young man, ‘to obtain some general principles of every science’.
– Henry Oliver
Similar to Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Johnson was a man interested in everything.
Second time through on the Samuel Johnson chapter…
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024. pg181, Kindle edition.
-
Go! Change your days. Burn with a hard gem-like flame.
– Henry Oliver
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024.
-
She wasn’t what Callard calls aspirational – she never set out to become this sort of explorer. Instead, she constantly self-cultivated, expanding her interests to a point where they had become something new and extraordinary. As her consciousness expanded, journey by journey, accident by accident, and her instincts were honed, she came to see the world in new way
– Henry Oliver
If you’re not sure what your goal is, or what your next project should be, pursuing a life of self-cultivation can help reveal what’s next.
As Henry explains:
By cultivating your existing interests, you can gradually develop yourself into something new.
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024.
Floodlights and Goalposts 