You've seen me harp on this before: never give up, because you can do whatever really means something to you. There is no such thing as too old, too dumb, too slow, too quiet, or, for that matter, too young. If you have a goal, you can reach it.

In Method Acting school, they taught us that we never needed to know how we were going to do something onstage.  What we had to know was what we were going to do, and why we were going to do it. The "how" was going to arise from the "what" and the "why" organically, without our fussing over particular gestures or facial expressions.

While that works very well on stage, and for that matter in television and radio announcing, that mental technique takes a real leap of faith when you're changing your life to return to school, change jobs, have your first child, or retire on a small budget. To the Method, I have to add, if you want to do it, you can find help. Look for scholarships, grants, education programs, workshops, whatever might be useful.  You might be surprised: if your credit union offers a seminar on housing costs, or the auto association presents a class on inexpensive travel, you could learn something that you can add into your own mix. Your education or retirement or great American novel doesn't have to look like anyone else's. It just has to look like what you want. If it stops being what you want, you have your own permission to change your mix, I hope.

This diatribe is brought on by the triumph today of Diana Nyad, who, at age 64, swam from Havana to Florida. If nothing else, she's shown the world that there are even fewer boundaries than we imagine. For every person who says "too old," the response from now on should be, "Yeah, I probably am, but when did you last swim for 53 hours, or write a thesis, or shoe a horse, or even sing a song to your parents? What's your excuse for not doing anything memorable in your life so far?"