According to a Gallup survey, happiness follows the U-shaped curve first proposed in a study by the economists David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald. Lately, however, the curve has invited skepticism. One strategy of these books is to emphasize that aging is natural and therefore good, an idea that harks back to Plato, who lived to be around eighty and thought philosophy best suited to men of more mature years women, no matter their age, could not think metaphysically.
Aristotle thought that the body lost heat as it aged. Montaigne took a more measured view. I know this because two recent books provide a sobering look at what happens to the human body as the years pile up. Armstrong, a British science and health writer, presents, in crack Michael Lewis style, the high points of aging research along with capsule biographies of the main players, while Blackburn, one of three recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physiology, focusses on the shortening of telomeres, those tiny aglets of DNA attached to our chromosomes, whose length is a measure of cellular health.
Basically, most cells divide and replicate some fifty-plus times before becoming senescent. Not nearly as inactive as the name suggests, senescent cells contribute to chronic inflammation and interfere with protective collagens.
Walt Whitman, who never married, made it to seventy-two, and offered a lyric case for aging. Bones weaken, eyes strain, hearts flag. Not surprisingly, sixty-eight per cent of Medicare beneficiaries today have multiple chronic conditions. Not a lot of grace, force, or fascination in that. Old age is full of death and full of life. It is a tolerable achievement and it is a disaster. I see nothing but opportunities and challenges ahead, and I refuse to get mired in wistful thinking about better times in the past.
Ageing needs rebranding for a very practical reason — doctors have found that negative attitudes can take as much as seven years off life expectancy and they can lead to poorer health. Dread — the fear that life can only get worse, leads to low self-esteem, and a whole host of medical issues. Our public health organisations seem obsessed with obesity, but they should be focusing on attitudes to age. We need a big re-education process, starting at primary school level. Many of us view old age as a period of decline and ordeal, with a third of the public believing that loneliness is inevitable with advancing years.
According to the report, these negative attitudes to old age are seen in children as young as six, and gradually get reinforced as they grow up. In reality, older people see themselves quite differently — the Office for National Statistics found that older people were the most satisfied with their lives , and were happier than most other groups. In some ways, this report tells us stuff we already know. As a teenager in the s I would look at my parents and see them as dinosaurs.
If, on the other hand, we see aging in terms of opportunity and growth, our bodies respond in kind. You may change your billing preferences at any time in the Customer Center or call Customer Service. You will be notified in advance of any changes in rate or terms.
You may cancel your subscription at anytime by calling Customer Service. This third approach to ageing recognises what reams of research have confirmed: that we become more diverse as we age.
Far from age obliterating any other aspect of our lives, those other aspects — social class, income, ethnicity — become more, not less, important over time. Growing older is a very different experience if you don't have to worry about heating bills or the bedroom tax.
If we are prepared to peer beyond the stereotypes, we find that ageing, just like the rest of life, is a mixture of gains and losses. There are losses associated with every stage of our lives: we may long to be free of the tyranny of school or a job, for instance, but grieve over the loss of the structure they provide. Throughout the lifecycle, mourning is an essential human task, freeing up a space in which new qualities and experiences can develop. For what is hidden in our culture are the gains associated with ageing.
Most older people say they care far less what other people think of them. When the American poet May Sarton was asked why it was good to be old, she replied: "Because I am more myself than I have ever been. Perhaps the greatest calumny committed against old people — and the one that most frightens the not-yet-old — is the belief that ageing causes us to leech vitality.
Let's not get too Pollyanna here: most people find their energy levels changing as they age, and have to learn to pace themselves. But physical and psychic vitality, though they may be related, especially if you're fighting pain, are not the same thing. The idea that one's appetite for life automatically abates with the passing of the years is simply wrong.
On the contrary, it often increases. One of the most delicious accounts of how growing older can mean growing more engaged was written by Florida Scott-Maxwell, the American-born playwright, suffragette and analyst. In , when she was 85, she wrote: "Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My 70s were interesting and fairly serene, but my 80s are passionate.
I grow more intense as I age. To my own surprise, I burst out with hot conviction … I must calm down. I am far too frail to indulge in moral fervour. People can revitalise themselves at any age; we can go on learning and developing until our final breath.
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