Originally published April 13, 2017
An article on aging caught my eye the other day and now it will not leave me alone. To Be a Genius, Think Like a 94-Year-Old, by the NY Times’s Pagan Kennedy, tells the story of John Goodenough and it is clear his name sells him short. He is a physicist who, at 57, was the co-inventor of the lithium-ion battery. He has recently filed a patent application for a new battery that promises to “be so cheap, lightweight and safe that it would revolutionize electric cars and kill off petroleum-fueled vehicles.” I immediately thought of a connection between aging and self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ms. Kennedy suggests that Goodenough is an example of how creativity and cognition can increase, rather than decrease, with age. He is able to draw upon a lifetime spent building a foundation of knowledge and experience.
The article makes much of the tendency in the business world and in our culture to favor youth and of the many biases expressed in agism. This is the part that I keep returning to. We Boomers, like generations before us, are subject to the debilitating effects of age discrimination. Here is a cause worth fighting for! Where should we direct our protests? Our demands for reform? Here’s a clue:
Like many couples after retirement, Ann and I have occasionally considered the conventional wisdom of moving somewhere that we can “age in place.” Single floor home, few if any stairs, appropriate height counters for a wheelchair, no shower ledge to step over, grab bars all over the bathrooms, etc. Of course we don’t need those things yet. The “wisdom” is that by the time we do actually need them, we will be comfortable in this new home and not need to face the trauma to our diminished faculties of moving.
In other words, our final years will be marked by infirmity. And all the time between now and then will be spent anticipating those final years. I would like to suggest a more fitting name for “aging in place.” Planned obsolescence. Well, we have other plans.
Recently our next door neighbors of many years moved into a new assisted living apartment in town. A mild stroke for him and a fall by her announced their readiness to their children. They are in their mid to late 80s, but they never seemed to realize it. I could hold my own with him on a tennis court, but by the time I remembered I couldn’t take it easy on him whenever we played Pickleball, he would pick it up a notch and beat me. He was notorious at the gym for lifting weights with his shirt off, and still looking good. She is full of energy and mischievous wit. We roared at her tales of the cross-country car-camping trip they took just four years ago.
Sure, many of us will, or already do, face health issues that no amount of prevention or positive thinking are going to help us avoid. But except for those circumstances, the evidence is mounting that we all have the option and means of increasing the quantity, but especially the quality and vitality, of our remaining years.
Aging and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Choose your future
My career in education gave me ample opportunities to observe the power of self-fulfilling prophecy on young learners, the contrast between children of similar intelligence who had internalized the powerful messages either that they were capable or that they were not. Research studies quantified the sometimes astounding role it plays in student success or failure. What does that have to do with us?
It turns out we are no different when we age.
I found this fascinating 2015 Irish study, Negative Perceptions of Aging and Decline in Walking Speed: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. One of the first things they did was divide the 4800 participants into two groups and primed one group with all these negative stereotypes about aging. (Or ageing, as spelled in Great Britain.) That group demonstrated immediate declines in objective walking speed.
Next, they addressed the longer term effects of that kind of negative attitude. The participants completed a questionnaire rating their level of agreement with statements of attitude about aging. After 2 years, walking speeds were measured and compared with their initial speeds and categorized by their questionnaire results.
Participants (average age 62.8) who remained in good health over the 2 years, but had indicated a “strong belief in a lack of control and in negative consequences as a result of aging” had a significant decline in their walking speed. What to make of this? Decline in walking speed is an important indicator of deteriorating health outcomes, including earlier death.
And, this study suggests, improving one’s outlook about aging should have the effect of slowing one’s rate of physical decline.
Applying common sense can lead to a similar conclusion. Someone who believes that painful, inflexible joints and poor balance are a normal part of getting older is more likely to exercise less, rather than differently, as those conditions inevitably get worse. Someone who believes it is natural to gain weight as one gets older is less likely to try to maintain a healthy weight.
The famous Nun study suggests that even the fearsome impact of Alzheimers can been blunted for some by a physically and mentally active and healthy lifestyle.
Other great examples of the power of our perceptions are in the CNN report, 5 Powerful Benefits of ‘Pro-Aging’ Thinking. Our attitudes and beliefs about aging can make positive differences in our behaviors, our thinking, and even on our immune system.
Aging and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Youth Shows But Half
So, perhaps you accept that it is in our power to make our final chapters happier and more robust than they might be otherwise. But, implied at the outset was that the conclusion of each of our stories has the potential not just for a happy ending, but for apotheosis, a culmination. How is that possible?
In our society, so much of our identity and self-worth is tied to our careers. I am a teacher. You are a doctor. You are a welder. You are a (fill in the blank.) When we retire, we find ourselves untethered. Adrift. Not many of us will be like John Goodenough, able to work in the same field into our nineties. The natural impulse is to assume and accept that the most valuable part of our lives is over.
I made a choice a few months ago, without fully understanding it, to believe that I had not lived the best part of my life yet. I don’t expect any patents in my future, but I do expect there is much still to be built on my own foundation. I expect that of each of us.
GROW old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in his hand
Who saith, “A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!”-Robert Browning