“It is remarkably precocious when a person accomplishes anything after the age of 30.”
— American author Martin Chizelwit Humphreys
To rest on one’s laurels (Idiom): To rely on one’s past achievements instead of working to maintain or advance one’s status or reputation
If you’ve ever wondered where that expression came from, here’s the scoop. The ancient Pythian Games held at Delphi in Greece were second only to that country’s original Olympics. Winning athletes were crowned with a wreath of laurels.
The word “laurel” and its derivatives have therefore come to mean triumph. (Think of Nobel laureates.) So, to rest on one’s laurels means to dine out on past accomplishments without making any further effort to establish or realize a new goal.
These days I’m not inclined to rest on mine. The reason? I’m shamed by the precocity of those who changed so much in our world long after the age of 30. Consider the following examples.
• Pierre Elliot Trudeau
We think of him as Pan — that is, preternaturally young — but he was actually 49 when he was first elected prime minister and well into his 60s before he left office. While he led the country, he repatriated the constitution, quelled an insurgency in Quebec, alienated the West, pirouetted behind the back of the Queen and frequently canoed like some Canadian Tire god into our country’s boreal wilderness. Not too shabby for a geezer, wouldn’t you say?
• Nelson Mandela
His story is always worth retelling. In 1964, after his longstanding non-violent struggle against the despicably racist policy of apartheid in South Africa, at the age of 46 Mandela was tried on trumped-up charges and sentenced to life imprisonment. He languished in various jails until 1990. By then, world pressure — largely fostered by Mandela and his supporters — was forcing the end of apartheid and general suffrage was proclaimed. Mandela won a Nobel Prize for his efforts in 1993 and became South Africa’s president in 1994 at age 76. He then championed South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation talks, leaving office five years later.
• Julia Child
The gangly, slightly goofy knife-wielding kitchen icon didn’t even know what a shallot was until she began living in postwar France in her 30s. Bowled over by the elegance of that country’s cuisine, she enrolled in a Cordon Bleu cooking school that changed her life. “To think it has taken me 40 years to find my true passion,” she once told her sister-in-law. In fact, she was nearly 50 before the foodie bible she co-wrote, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, was published. Then, at 51, she became an unlikely TV star when her beloved but much lampooned PBS show, The French Chef, began airing in 1963.
• Theresa Helen McNeil
The Nova Scotia mother of 17 was 45 when her husband, Burt, died in 1973. She had seven children still under the age of 10 at the time.
Struggling but undaunted, four years later she broke a significant glass ceiling to become Annapolis County’s high sheriff and the first woman in Canadian history to hold the rank.
Her children grew up to become teachers, public servants, police officers and small-business owners. (One, Stephen McNeil, now serves as leader of the province’s Liberal Party.) Theresa was also a tireless volunteer who delivered Meals on Wheels to her neighbours until she herself became too ill to do so.
She received the Canada 125 Medal in 1992 and the Queen’s Jubilee Medal in 2002. In 2005 she was named to the Order of Nova Scotia. She died in 2009 at 81.
The point is this. I can preen and I can bask. I can rest on my laurels too, but I prefer to think of the word as a euphemism for butt. My sense is that the moment we stop regarding life as anything but a work in progress, we’re in danger of congealing like week-old Jell-O.
My future hasn’t unfolded as I might have wanted or predicted. But that has come to matter less and less. I still have goals. And while they might not be as lofty as Mandela’s or as culturally defining as Child’s, I hold on to them fiercely. And they keep me going.
