Great article. I love few things more than sitting at my laptop and being inspired while learning new things.

Thanks for providing me with both!

When I returned to university in my late forties to study to be a psychotherapist, I soon discovered that I could not just flat out memorize facts and lists the way my younger peers could. I also discovered that, because of my broader perspective, I could learn just as effectively in my own way because I was able to process the material at a deeper and more elaborated level of understanding.
As a person in my fifties starting a new career I make a clear seperation in my mind between knowledge and understanding.
Understanding is not dependant on education and facts. This is why we assign wisdom to age. It is a young person's "dream" to want to be a prodigy and make an irradicable mark on the world. As we age, we don't have to dream so much because we KNOW, by our regrets and our achievements, that the world has been affected by our presence.
Psychologist Carl Jung felt deeply that human lives blossomed in their first half, but only ripened in their second half. He proposed that the first half of life was properly dedicated to growing up, learning the rules of your society, proving that you could be a productive member, supporting yourself and founding a family etc. etc. He proposed that the second half of life was where the individual made use of all this experience to express their own personality...to become, as he so beautifully phrased it, "the experiment that nature intended."
In the second half of life we do indeed lose the physical forces that might make us an athlete or let us work all night and the beauty that charms effortlessly, but we are able, out of hard won experience, to do psychological, emotional and genuinely creative and individual work which is deeply fulfilling and that we could not even imagine in the first half!
My own mother decided at 73 to learn to use the computer. She wrote, illustrated and self-published three 300 page children's novels.
I am starting a new career in my fifties. They say grey hair looks good on a therapist. I believe it.

Love the article. At 50 myself, I have just enrolled in college. I was a little worried that I was too old, but I'm quickly learning this is not the case.

I am one of those "LATE BLOOMERS". I went back to school at age fifty to learn computer programs for illustrations. However my life got one more time side tracked. My mother was diagnosed at the same time with Multi Infarct Dementia. That was ten years ago. She is now 87 and mostly in bed. I was and am her sole caregiver. As a child and as a young adult I was told that I had great gift as an artist. However at the same time I was also very insecure and had a very low self-esteem. But it is now at this point in my life that I am more than ever determined to leave my "FOOT PRINT IN THE SEND". I was searching for sites like yours were others like me are starting a second chapter in their book of life. It is inspirational. How sad it is for those who have retired from life. I believe that since we all are dying from the day that we are borne, why not live, live to the fullest....Life is a precious element. What a great experience. There is so much to learn, so much to create, so much to share.