It's never too late

"For the past 33 years, I've looked at myself in the mirror every morning and asked myself: if today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I'm about to do today?" "And every time the answer has been NO for too many days in a row, I knew I had to change something", said Steve Jobs in 2005 during a lecture at Stanford University. Many of us have thought it at least once: maybe I'll quit my job, leave, and change my life. In most cases, this impulse remains without consequence, an isolated thought that is, in fact, unattainable. Is there a right time to change your life? It's never too late, because age is irrelevant: on the contrary, more experience can lead to greater possibilities for change. Because a great change can happen by chance, but the important thing is to be ready for it, as shown by these eight inspiring stories. Four women and four men who managed to change everything only after they finished discovering themselves.

Vanda Scaravelli
Yoga teacher
Vanda Scaravelli, born in 1908, was a lady of Florentine high society, the daughter of intellectuals, destined to be a wife and mother, like many women of her time and background. In 1940, she married Luigi Scaravelli, and despite her home being a crossroads for intellectuals and artists (including Arturo Toscanini and philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti), Vanda participated as a mere bystander in that fervor. At 47, she became a widow, in an era when fifty was already considered old age. But she began studying yoga with Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, the father of modern yoga. At 60, she began teaching yoga, and when she turned 91, she published her only book: Awakening the Spine, one of the most translated and widely read yoga manuals of all time.

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Andrea Camilleri
Writer
After two books that went unnoticed, the first of which, Il corso delle cose ("The Course of Things") was self-published at 53, he was on the verge of giving up. When he turned 59, her editor friend Elvira Sellerio published La strage dimenticata ("The Forgotten Massacre"), but it was another failure. Camilleri stopped writing for 12 years. At 67, in 1992, when he was already retired from his work as a TV director and screenwriter, he began writing again to pass the time. In 1994, he had the first volume featuring Commissario Montalbano, La forma dell'acqua ("The Shape of Water"), published by Sellerio. Thanks to word of mouth, sales increased and Sellerio began to advertise the book. And the success keeps on coming.

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Susan Boyle
Singer
Known as the winner of the talent show Britain's Got Talent (though she actually finished second), the Scottish Susan Boyle suffers from Asperger's syndrome. Born to elderly parents, she has learning difficulties and was bullied with the nickname "Susie the Simple". She took singing lessons and cared for her mother for twenty years, but continued to sing: in church, at the pub, at karaoke. In 1994, she participated in a show hosted by Michael Barrymore, who mocked her for her quirky appearance (today, Michael Barrymore, overwhelmed by subsequent scandals, has been forgotten). Susan stopped performing and only after her mother's death in 2007 did she find the courage to participate in Britain's Got Talent: it was 2009 and she was 47 years old. When she stepped onto the stage, the audience held back their mockery, but as soon as she began to sing, she sounded like an angel, and her video garnered hundreds of millions of views. Today, she is still under contract with Sony and performs on Broadway.

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Pellegrino Artusi
Gastronomy
An enthusiastic supporter of the new scientific method, where everything must be tested and retested, including cooking recipes, the writer Artusi led an ordinary life and, at 71, dedicated himself to a text on gastronomy. The result is a manual of infallible recipes, La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene (The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well), written in a perfect style with a wonderful use of the Italian language. These two elements, combined with a rigorous scientific approach, made it almost incomprehensible to the readers of his time. After a thousand rejections from publishers and a few self-published editions with little success, suddenly, in 1891, the book began to spread as its innovative impact was finally understood. From 1891 to 1911, the year of his death, Artusi oversaw 15 editions, making him the undisputed father of modern Italian cuisine, which, thanks to him, spread worldwide.

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Stan Lee
The Smiling, the creative mind who transformed Marvel Comics from a small publishing house into a global giant, was born in 1922 and, at 17, joined Timely Comics (the precursor to Marvel). He started by filling ink wells, erasing pencil lines from inked pages, and writing stories in the style of the time until the outbreak of World War II. In the 1950s, McCarthyism imposed censorship on comics, and Stan Lee was about to quit, but publisher Martin Goodman asked him to create a new group of superheroes. Stan's wife, Joan, suggested that he follow his creativity, and at 39, together with illustrator Jack Kirby, he created the Fantastic Four: superheroes with human traits, complicated and imperfect. For readers, it was a groundbreaking shift, and the history of comics changed forever.

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J. K. Rowling
Born Joanne Rowling, she began writing the Harry Potter saga during a difficult time in her life. As a single mother with no job and relying on state assistance, she wrote fairy tales for her daughter in local cafés to cope with her depression. From one of these cafés, she looked through the windows and saw a monumental school, thinking it would be perfect for magic lessons. In 1995, she finished writing her first novel and titled it Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. She chose only one literary agent because his name inspired her: Christopher Little. After 11 rejections from publishers, the president of Bloomsbury in London read the first five chapters to his daughter Alice, who enthusiastically asked for the rest of the story. Bloomsbury issued a first, cautious print run of only a thousand copies, which disappeared in the blink of an eye, flooding the publishing house with thousands of requests for a reprint. The rest is history. In fact, magic.

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Grandma Moses
Her stage name was Anna Mary Robertson, born in 1860. After the loss of her husband, she began painting self-taught at the age of 67, depicting fields, agricultural work, the seasons, farms, and everything that was part of her rural life. In 1938, when she was 78, a New York gallery owner discovered her by chance, seeing some paintings in a country store: he bought them all and took them to his gallery, selling them in a short time. Her most famous painting, Apple Butter Making, depicts the process of making apple butter. From that moment, Grandma Moses became a national sensation, and her paintings found their way into the finest salons. She herself, when visiting the Museum of Modern Art in New York to see some of her paintings on display, would later say that it was the first time she had ever entered a museum. She passed away at the age of 101, perfectly lucid and still active; her paintings are still sold at international auction houses today.

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Christopher Paul Gardner
Today, he is the wealthy president of Christopher Gardner International Holdings, but during the 1980s, he lived in poverty. After failing as a medical equipment salesman, one day he happened to encounter Bob Bridges, a distinguished and well-dressed man who was parking a Ferrari. Curious, Gardner asked him what job he did, and he replied that he was a broker. From that moment on, Gardner decided he wanted to become a broker as well. Hired by a small firm, for a year, unbeknownst to everyone, he worked 20 hours a day, sleeping in motels, airports, parking lots, in his office, on public transportation, and in public restrooms. In 1987, he opened his brokerage firm in Chicago, and his career took off. His memoir, The Pursuit of Happyness, published in May 2006, later became a highly successful movie directed by Gabriele Muccino with Will Smith as the protagonist.