As a culture, we put a lot of emphasis on the successes of precocious young talents. This is especially true in the arts.
I’ve known many ambitious, talented young people who have tracked their development against the Glenn Goulds, the Mozarts, the Truman Capotes and the Kurt Cobains. This is rarely a good idea.
We’ve built a near-mythology around our youngest and most visibly gifted. And like many mythologies, our cult of the young genius tells us more about our hopes and dreams and misperceptions than it does about the way our world actually works.
Of course, young prodigies do exist, and people in their twenties sometimes do become wildly successful. But the reason we’re aware of them isn’t their ubiquitousness. We’re inundated with their stories specifically because of how rare they are.
What’s most frustrating is that this scarcity isn’t due to a lack of raw material. In reality, most talent is interrupted on its way to genius. The famed biologist Stephen Jay Gould had something when he said:
“I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
Fortunately, you’re free and it’s never too late to do something memorable.
Leonard Cohen released his first album at 33. Sheryl Crow’s first came at 31. Neither Roald Dahl nor J.R.R Tolkien had written anything you’re familiar with until they were past 40.
And if a little schadenfreude helps: Although Beethoven wrote his first piano sonanta when he was 25, I can testify that it’s not particularly good. If he had stopped composing after that, you never would have heard of him. (Although in fairness, it’s probably is better than the sonata you haven’t written yet. So: Chop Chop!)
But none of that really matters either. Stop comparing yourself. Just stay focused. Do what you need to do to. A bit of it every day. No excuses.