From the Midrash

It has been said that Rabbi Akiva learned nothing until he was forty years old. After he married the daughter of the wealthy Kalba Savu’a, she urged him to go to Jerusalem to study Torah.

“I’m forty years old,” he said to her. “What can I accomplish? They’ll laugh at me because I know nothing.”

“Let me show you something,” his wife said. “Bring me an ass whose back is injured.”

When Akiva brought the ass, she covered its sore back with dust and earth and herbs so it looked ridiculous.

The first day they took the ass to market, people laughed at it. They laughed the second day too. But on the third day, nobody laughed anymore.

“Go and study Torah,” said Akiva’s wife. “Today people will laugh, tomorrow they will not laugh and the day after they’ll say, “That’s his way.”

…as taken from Francine Klagsbrun, Voices of Wisdom