Success

Late Bloomers, Experimental Innovators, and Ulyssean Adults

During the Great Depression, a struggling Irish Catholic family living in Brooklyn decided to return to Ireland in hopes of improving their financial situation.

The alcoholic father could not find steady work in Dublin or Belfast, however, so the family ended up in a slum in Limerick, where the parents and four children all shared a single bed.

Before the family left Brooklyn, one of the children (a baby girl) died a few weeks after birth. Two more children (twin boys) would die in early childhood in the slums of Limerick, and two more boys would be born there. Another boy, Frank, nearly died of typhoid fever in adolescence.

Overcoming Cultural Constraints on Your Success

Late in 2018, actor Alexander Skarsgard appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to promote the release of the miniseries The Little Drummer Girl, in which he plays an Israeli intelligence officer.

Colbert reminds Skarsgard that since his last appearance on the show, the actor has won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his Perry Wright role on the HBO series Big Little Lies.

Colbert suggests that even though Alexander comes from a storied acting family, maybe he could lord his most recent awards over the rest of the Skarsgard clan.

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