Aging with a little optimism
Following my dad’s death last summer, I resolved to visit my oldest relative, my grandmother’s sister. My great aunt, Bobbie, was 11 years younger than my grandmother and has been a surrogate grandmother for me in the 20 years since I lost my own. My own grandmother was a gambler, a smoker, and a drinker. She was funny, and sometimes crass. But she loved me, and I really enjoyed spending time with her. She loved games, card games, in particular. She played poker with her friends, but with us kids, she usually played rummy or Yahtzee. She taught me pinochle when I got older. For as long as I can remember, she had coins on hand to make our games “more interesting.” Dementia robbed us of her final years, and I miss her very much.
Bobbie and my grandmother were very close, despite the age gap and other differences. Bobbie had four children; my grandmother had only my mother, having subsequently lost two pregnancies. She called them miscarriages, but at seven and nine months, they sounded like still births to me. Bobbie was married to her high school sweetheart and never worked outside her home. My grandmother, by contrast, with two failed marriages and a disapproving mother, was acutely aware of the need to provide for herself and her daughter and spent most of her working years as a Navy civilian.
Bobbie was naturally loving and motherly, and when my grandmother was gone, she was a comfort to me. For the past few years, my attempts to visit her have been thwarted, first by the pandemic, and then by her own fears and anxieties around aging. She is embarrassed by her looks and her frailty. Three visits were planned and cancelled before my wife and I were finally able to make the trip to western Pennsylvania this past fall.
For 92, to my eyes, she seemed to be doing pretty well. Her own assessment of her ability to have visitors, however, was overwhelmed by her inability to adequately entertain us, by her feeling that she can’t be far from the reassuring comforts of her house. After finally being able to see her and give her the hug that’s impossible to share over the phone, we spent an enjoyable afternoon catching up followed by an early dinner.
The next morning, we received a text from my cousin letting us know that my aunt wasn’t up to seeing us again. She had had a difficult night and was simply too tired for another visit. My aunt wanted us to stop by in the late afternoon for another hug and to say goodbye, but that’s all she could do. She just couldn’t entertain guests again. I told my cousins, I didn’t need my aunt to take care of me now, I wanted to take care of her. I would have loved to cook for her or take her to her beloved Red Lobster or just play a game.
Does aging have to look like this? Does it have to feel like this? My dad would have never discouraged us from visiting, but like Bobbie, he was withdrawing from life, overwhelmed by the effects of aging and grieving the loss of strength and vitality and purpose that made life worthwhile, or perhaps even bearable. With Bobbie five hours away, and her ability to commit to a visit so tenuous, I left wondering if I’d ever see her again.
Our brains change throughout our lifetimes, adapting to help us manage different phases of life. The brain declines as it ages, to be sure, but some of these changes are instrumental in making us better-equipped to handle different things at different points in our lives.
At birth, our brains contain 100 billion neurons, but not a lot of synapses. As white matter develops, our neurons are able to transmit information faster between brain areas, allowing more complex processes to occur. In just the first few years of life, a ratio of approximately 2,500 synapses per neuron at birth increases to 15,000. This rapid rate of development helps explain why children more easily acquire languages and musical skills.
Neuroplasticity is the brain’s capacity to continue growing and evolving in response to life experiences. Beginning around three years old, unneeded synaptic connections are removed, so that the brain can become more efficient and continue to absorb new information as we age. In our teens, the brain stops growing but continues its development.
Areas of the brain associated with reward and risk develop faster than the areas associated with self-control and rational decision-making. This explains why teens are more prone to risk-taking and addiction than adults. Through puberty, areas associated with self-awareness and evaluation develop, improving teens' understanding of social interactions but making them more susceptible to social anxiety.
The brain is fully developed by our 30s with white matter at its peak by our 40s. Plasticity though continues to improve efficiency along with other developments into middle age, and the ability of the brain to adapt in response to experience allows us to be resilient. Decades of experience with difficult situations stimulate neural pathways that can be activated to respond in similar situations.
While aging is ultimately thought to decrease resilience through the cumulative effects of stress on neuroplasticity, the dynamic capacity of the brain to rewire itself makes a case for lifelong stimulation as a way to maintain optimal brain health, decreasing the risk of dementia, Alzheimer’s, and degenerative disorders.
Our brains begin to slow in our 30s and 40s, accelerating into our 60s and 70s. As we move into later life, our cerebral cortex thins, reducing grey matter associated with memory, emotion, navigation. White matter also shrinks, producing less dopamine and serotonin, resulting in slower cognitive processing.
Neuroplasticity relates to our ability to learn. With every repetition of a thought or an emotion, we reinforce a neural pathway. With each new thought, we begin to create a new way of being.
To counteract the natural effects of aging, there are many things we can do to stimulate neuroplasticity and maintain brain health. Physical activity helps strengthen networks of neuronal connection, promoting mental and behavioral flexibility. Walking an hour a day, five days a week, can increase brain matter in the hippocampus, strengthening learning and memory. Investing in positive relationships and friendships, cultivating a growth mindset, participating in new activities, engaging in play, putting ourselves in stimulating environments, and developing a sense of purpose in life are some of the ways we can directly boost neuroplasticity.
I recently spent a long, luxurious weekend with a group of my closest college friends. We’ve known each other for 40 years. Collectively, we’re experiencing many of the changes and challenges of midlife, generally defined as those years between 45 and 65.
Most of us have recently become empty nesters. Some of us are questioning what work looks like for the next 10 — or more — years and how confidently we can finance our futures. Most of us have lost at least one of our parents; and our surviving parents are aging. For some, health issues are becoming more acute. A few of us are divorced and navigating all of this without a partner. During the pandemic, my college roommate, Chris, one of our closest friends, died of an aggressive prostate cancer, underscoring for all of us that life can be painfully short.
After having spent years focused on our families, and all that those years require of us, it was Chris’s illness that really brought us together. We recommitted ourselves to spending time together and supporting each other through midlife. While we were away, I came across an essay entitled Midlife Doesn’t Have to Be a Crisis. The author offered suggestions about how to avoid the stereotypical midlife crisis, which afflicts 10 to 20 percent of us.
At any age, these kinds of suggestions can seem trite or simplistic — and can ignore any number of unique challenges that people may be facing — but there were several suggestions that seemed useful, including to invest in your friendships. I always appreciate such clear validation of the very thing that I’m doing in that moment, but what really hit me was the suggestion to be unapologetic about who you are. The author noted that she felt stronger and more confident and had less angst than when she was younger. This resonated for me. When I was younger, I was young for my grade, having skipped fourth grade, and was barely 120 pounds through most of high school. I excelled in swimming but was not otherwise athletic. And I was bullied. When I got to college, surrounded by people who were smart, wealthy, connected, and beautiful, imposter syndrome settled in, and bullying continued.
Now in my 50s, I’ve shed many of my most crippling insecurities and don’t doubt myself the way I used to. I recognize that I’m fortunate to have my wife with me through this stage of life and also to have my health and a degree of financial security that makes midlife less stressful. But what does the future look like? What exactly does healthy aging look like for me?
The Economist recently highlighted reduced productivity levels and less innovation among aging societies. Younger people have more of what psychologists call “fluid intelligence,” meaning the ability to solve new problems and engage with new ideas. Older people have more “crystallized intelligence” — a stock of knowledge about how things work built up over time. Both types of intelligence are valuable, but the two are not equivalent when it comes to generating game-changing new ideas.
In deeply moving appearances at the Grammys, the artists Tracy Chapman and Joni Mitchell were both displaying their crystallized intelligence to maximum effect. While neither performed new songs, both performances were wrenching for their emotional impact, each demonstrating the power and wisdom of their respective ages. It almost seems impossible that Joni Mitchell was just 21 when she wrote Both Sides Now. That song has always packed an emotional punch, but never more so than seeing her perform it at 80 years old.
The challenge is how to leverage our crystallized intelligence — and the other strengths of our maturity — while also nurturing and maintaining our fluid intelligence against the natural effects of brain aging. Staying physically active, investing in friendships, seeking new activities. There’s a certain inertia involved in aging well — keep moving, keep doing, keep working — but it’s more than just doing the same things.
So often, I say I want things to stay the same, but I don’t think that’s what I mean at all.
Many of us have memories of our grandparents’ homes that transition into museums at some point. Furnishings that might once have seemed fresh or even contemporary become dated and stale. Nothing moves from its dedicated place. Like my aunt, maintaining a routine seems to become more important than the experience of living. Like my father, it becomes easier to focus on what we can’t do any longer than what we still can do. In one of my favorite classic films Auntie Mame, each scene revealed that Mame had radically and hilariously redecorated her Beekman Place penthouse to keep up with the times and her changing tastes. It was over the top, but she was onto something.
One of the things we love to do is travel. We enjoy thinking about the next trip, spinning the globe and deciding where to go next. So what I mean by doing what I’ve always done, is to continue to have new experiences. I look forward to seeing Spotify’s New Music Friday and what’s on my Release Radar. I still pursue deeper relationships and new friendships. And not only do I want to keep working, I want to keep doing it creatively, bringing something new to each project, each day and each year. I may say I want things to stay the same, but they can’t, and I don’t really want that anyway. What I want to do is to keep up. I want to be relevant.
One way of doing that, I hope, is writing. I read recently that writers are driven by a need to tell people who they are. I suppose so. But I was particularly moved by something Don DeLillo said.
I write to find out how much I know. The act of writing for me is a concentrated form of thought. If I don’t enter that particular level of concentration, the chances are that certain ideas never reach any level of fruition.—Don DeLillo, author
For me writing is a fundamentally creative act, a challenge to myself to say something new, at least to say something in a new way. While my writing mixes personal experience with politics, culture, history, and economics, it’s really the creative piece that challenges me. I enjoy finding new ways of putting ideas together, like creating a through line from my aunt to Joni Mitchell. I’m hoping to connect all these things in new ways that highlight the universal human experience, encourage us to look at the world with optimism, and give us hope for the future. This is what healthy aging looks like to me.
