Some Senior Stuff - Quareness Series 111th "Lecture".
A noticeable feature of contemporary society (at least in the West) is our growing tendency to "put the best face" on being elderly, with our senior years seen as evidently(?) a time to celebrate ourselves and the wonderful experiences to come such as acquiring new skills, travelling, volunteering, etc. To put it another way...we are being reassured that getting old just means having to work harder at staying young.
Some say that the older brain works in a more synchronised way and that aging may even alter the structure of ye old thinkin' boxes in ways that boost creativity. The idea here is that seniors will tend to be more comfortable within their own skins through experiencing less social anxiety and fewer social phobias. Some surveys have shown that people's sense of well-being is highest in childhood and old age, with a perceptible dip around mid-life. However, maybe the people who participate in such surveys have experienced lives which tend to follow this pattern curve, while those who feel more miserable into their 70s and beyond may be brooding over unrealised
expectations (“at the age where food has taken the place of sex in our lives") and don’t bother to respond. Indeed the whole idea that aging is natural and therefore good, brings to mind Plato's thinking that philosophy be best suited to men of more mature years...a view vehemently opposed by his most famous pupil (Aristotle) who
denounced old men as cowardly, cynical, loquacious, miserly and temperamentally chilly. So where does that leave the graybeards?
Considering the end of a long life to be extraordinary and rare and singular...the last and most extreme form of dying...may be a better balanced and more satisfying mindset. There's a reasonable chance we could be happier at say 80 than we were at 20 or 40, but we're probably going to feel worse.
Our human physiology puts the focus on telomeres (tiny aglets/edges of DNA attached to our chromosomes) whose length is a measure of cellular health. Most of our cells divide and replicate over 50 times before becoming senescent at which stage they contribute to chronic inflammation and interfere with protective collagens. And all the time our telomeres shorten with each cell division...a process whereby our lifestyle impacts on the degree of shrinkage involved. Over time whether this inbuilt process is quicker or slower, the DNA of us all gets gummed up with age-related mitochondrial mutations reducing our cells' ability to generate energy and our immune systems slowly grow less efficient. The way things are tending to go today many can look forward to weakening bones, straining eyes, flagging hearts, bladders emptying too often, bowels not often enough and the build up of toxic proteins in the brain to form the plaque and spaghetti-like tangles associated with dementia...in short getting our money's worth from our health insurance premiums in addressing multiple chronic conditions.
“There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning - devotion to individuals, to groups, or to causes - social, political, intellectual, or creative work” (Simone de Beauvoir - "The Coming of Age"). Old age does not have to be a tragedy
or a period of quiet despair, deprivation, desolation and muted rage. Indeed it need have no singular conclusion given its paradoxically balanced nature - old age is full of death and full of life, is a tolerable achievement and a disaster, transcends desire and taunts it, and is both long enough and far from being long enough. Our lives accrue meaning over time and the story of the self is hardly complete until it experiences old age - that stage of life that helps us grasp who we are and what our life has meant. Although it may be difficult within our physical limitations to generate new thoughts into our mid 70s, because of a reduced ability to develop a new set of neural
connections that can supercede the existing network, our creativity and originality and productivity can escape being pretty much gone for some (many?) of us if we remain connected into larger philosophical considerations.
Approaching old age with grace and fortitude may be an attractive proposition involving a welcome respite from the anxieties, passions and troubles of those earlier years, but alas old age itself can make this a difficult goal. Railing against the inevitable and complaining seem both pointless and unseemly when we wonder about what it all means...as somebody pointed out..."at first we want life to be romantic, later to be bearable, and finally to be understandable". Aging might broaden experience and perspective but contentment and wisdom are not certain to follow.
A contented old age may well depend on what we were like before we became old. Selfish people will possibly find aging rather less tolerable than those who have sought a more altruistic meaning to life. Those fortunate enough to have lived a full and productive life may take their leave without undue regret but others may come to resent time's insistent drumbeat and the inevitable restrictions it imposes. Nevertheless if reasonably satisfied with what we've accomplished and feeling more comfortable now that we no longer have to prove ourselves, maybe the loss of youth is a fair trade-off? And making our peace with aging might encourage us to follow the lead of the late English neurologist Oliver Sacks who chose to regard old age as “a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together.”
Socrates told us that philosophy is the practice of dying and that thought itself is shaped by mortality...and it’s because our existence is limited (in time's grip) that we’re able to think past those limits, although such is no guarantee of wisdom. Then again if you're a glass-half-full type, you might not worry about this and instead greet
each new day with enthusiasm and gratitude despite your ailments. Anyway our elder humans have always known that "one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever” as well as "in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow...the fate of the fool will overtake me also...what then do I gain by being wise?...this too is meaningless”.
"If I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself" - Mae West. There are as many ways to grow old as there are people going about it, despite our aches and ailments. In truth a long life is a gift which we may not necessarily be grateful for. Living into our 70s and beyond may sometimes see us regarding ourselves (and being regarded by others) as a tattered coat upon a stick nervously awaiting the second oblivion. In the circumstances perhaps the really sensible goal may be to live long enough to genuinely think that we've lived long enough.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
November, 2019.