Attitude and Age

You've heard the statement many times that this is a young person's world - and a quick check of the history books rapidly establishes that this statement has considerable validity. For example, Lindberg at age twenty five was the first man to fly nonstop over the Atlantic Ocean to Paris; John Paul Jones was a full sea captain at twenty two; Napoleon was an artillery captain before he was twenty three; Edgar Allen Poe was internationally known as a poet at eighteen; Tracy Austin won the U.S. Open Tennis Championship at age sixteen; Alexander the Great had conquered the known world at twenty six; Eli Whitney was twenty eight when he perfected the cotton gin. We also frequently see stories of child prodigies who at age five are solving mathematical equation that confound college professors. The list is truly endless of all the people who've done remarkable things before their thirtieth birthday.

This obviously proves that it is a young person's world. Or does it? I'm going to prove that it's also an old person's or even a middle aged person's world. As a matter of fact, it is really your world, regardless of your age. Read on and you'll see what I mean.

Commodore Vanderbilt was not known as a great railroad king until he was seventy; at eighty eight he was the most active railroad man of his day. Socrates started studying music when he was eighty; Pasteur discovered his hydrophobia cure when he was sixty; Columbus was well over fifty when he made his first voyage of American discovery; Voltaire, Newton, Spenser, Talleyrand, and Thomas Jefferson all were active and in their intellectual prime after eighty. Grandma Moses achieved her fame and success after age ninety. Galileo discovered the monthly and daily phases of the moon when he was seventy three. The list is endless.

What this really says is that the world belongs to anybody who will recognize that now is the time and here is the place - to go to the top.

"To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am."

~ Bernard M.Baruch