Some reflections on aging
The idea of the happiness U-curve, is that one's twenties are a fun and happy precursor to the nadir of midlife, before things pick up again in old age. I'm middle-aged, but my life hasn't bend to the U-curve, which alas, is not unusual. There's been a tonne of research suggesting that for many, life doesn't follow that trajectory. I was unhappiest in the interminable period between adolescence and my early 30s. Grief at an early age will do that to you. But I'm pleased to report that there's been a massive upswing since - it gets better.
Whatever shape your line takes, there are some interesting quirks to aging. Ian Leslie's 27 notes on growing old(er) are hilarious for being so astutely observed. What follow are some choice excerpts that I enjoyed, but the whole post is worth a read.
Brutal reflections
13. Some times I will meet someone I haven’t seen for twenty years, or simply see a photo of them, and get a momentary, discombobulating shock at how old they are. And then almost immediately I realise - or re-realise - that I’ve grown older too. Once we start talking I forget all about it, but that moment is a little glimpse into the double game that the brain is playing.
It's happened to me a few times that I've met someone for the first time and thought that they look old, only to discover that shock, horror, we're more or less the same age.
24. To be reminded of your decay every time you look in the mirror is, as the kids say, low-key brutal, but if nothing else it teaches you acceptance of things you can’t control. It’s a rigorous spiritual practice.
Older but wiser?
Leslie thinks not:
15. Wisdom is meant to be the great compensation for growing older. Though your your knees sound like they’re unlocking a safe when you bend down, and you can’t straighten up without an “oof”, you can at least revel in the depth of your insights into the human condition. Well, yes and no. It is true that we accumulate knowledge (and if we try really hard, more of it than we forget). It’s true that we get a feel for the repeated patterns that constitute so much of human experience, and a clearer sight of the possible mistakes arrayed before us at any point in time (whether or not we make them anyway being another question). But there are countering forces too. The world changes faster than we’re ready for, which borks our pattern-detecting software. We’re endlessly self-deluding; we smooth the random accidents of life into stories that put us in control of our own destiny (this is what The Road Not Taken is really about). We’re also lazier, more set in our ways, more dogmatic, less prone to question our assumptions. If we’re not careful, our ‘wisdom’ makes us stupid. Most cognitive decline is self-inflicted.
The fact is, older people do unwise things too. I can think of a septuagenarian, orange-hued, glorious leader of a mighty country whose wisdom appears to have entirely eluded him.
On acting your age
19. Should you act your age? Yes if it means making elegant and creative adaptations to it. No, if it means performing it: striving too hard to convey authority, or worse, behaving like somebody who has given up on life.
21. There’s an interview with Mick Jagger from when he was 58, in which he’s way more patient than he might have been, while a Dutch interviewer suggests he’s too old to be a rock singer. Jagger is 81 now and still selling out stadiums. Jagger, McCartney and others from their generation have endured decades of being sneered at for not “acting their age”. Few people do that anymore. By stubbornly persisting, they’ve changed our ideas of what that phrase means.
22. Jagger and McCartney hardly ever engage in age-based self-deprecation. They tend not to make those slightly nervous “I’m just an old geezer” jokes, of the kind that the rest of us start making from the moment we pass 30. I think that might have something to do with the almost ridiculously good time they’re having in their eighties. They play the double game to perfection: simultaneously aware of age and oblivious to it.
Living is an act of resistance agaisnt entropy
20. "To get born, your body makes a pact with death, and from that moment, all it tries to do is cheat.” Louise Glück. I am not certain what she meant but this reads optimistically to me. All our biological processes - healing wounds, fighting infection, repairing cellular damage, maintaining homeostasis - are essentially the body attempting to beat the system. I sometimes hear people criticise fitness fanatics by saying they’re trying to deny mortality. Well, no shit - that’s the whole game. We’re cheating entropy from the moment we’re born. Every organism, including the one which is you, is a revolt - an organised rebellion - against the universe’s fundamental drive towards disorder. When you’re up against an enemy this implacable, I say it’s OK to cheat. In fact it’s heroic. The universe wants us to be dust and will eventually get the job done. Staying vital for as long as we can is a magnificently perverse act of resistance.
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