It’s not how old you are but how you are old.
—Jules Renard
I GREW UP BELIEVING THAT I WOULD BE AN ADULT the day I turned 18 and officially old on my 65th birthday. I suppose this is because I was told that I could drink alcohol at 18 and retire at 65. But why 65? Why not 60 or 70?
It turns out that during the 19th century, the Prussian General Otto von Bismarck was pressured to provide former military men with a pension. At first he refused, preferring to devote all of his resources to his military ambitions. Under continued pressure, Bismarck commissioned a study that found the average life span of retired soldiers to be 66 years. Armed with this information, he agreed to grant pensions at age 65, quieting his critics while controlling costs. This retirement age was adopted by industries across Europe and eventually spread to the United States. Turning 65 is but one way to think about aging. This book presents an alternative.
A RICH LIFE
I don’t believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun.
Virginia Woolf
Madame Calment, the grandmother of France, died in 1997 at the age of 122. Over the years, her birthday became a citywide holiday in her hometown of Arles, with everyone turning out to honor their matriarch. Madame Calment was quite a character. From early childhood, she enjoyed playing a variety of sports, rode her bicycle for almost a century, and took up fencing at the age of 85. She personally credited drinking wine for her longevity and, despite her doctor’s warnings, she consumed two pounds of chocolate a week, smoked every day, and lived to attend her doctor’s funeral.
After 46 years of marriage, she and her husband Fernand had the misfortune of dining on some poorly preserved cherries. Fernand died, but Madame Calment lived on, and on—so long, in fact, that all of her immediate family and her lifelong friends passed away, leaving her to wonder if she had been “forgotten by the Good Lord.” Despite her many losses, Madam Calment lived life to the fullest, enjoying people, laughter, and telling stories. She was quoted as having said, “All my life I’ve put olive oil on my skin and then just a puff of powder. . . . I could never wear mascara. I cried too often when I laughed.” And my favorite: “I’ve never had but one wrinkle, and I’m sitting on it.”
While accounts vary, a popular story about Madame Calment tells of a deal she made during her 90th year. A local accountant half her age, Andre-Francois Raffray, agreed to pay her 2,500 francs a month in exchange for her home upon her death. After all, how much longer could a 90-year-old woman live? With no living heirs, this reverse mortgage seemed like a wise decision for both Madam Calment and Raffray. Unfortunately for the accountant, he continued to pay her every month for 31 years until his death in 1996. To add insult to injury, his heirs continued the payments until Madam Calment’s death. It is estimated that this deal netted her more than three times the value of her property.
Near the end of her life, Madame Calment, by then almost completely blinded by cataracts, was visited on her birthday by President Chirac. After being examined by the president’s personal doctor, she was told that a simple surgery could restore her sight. As a gift from France, she would be taken to Paris, have the procedure, and recover for as long as she would like at the president’s mansion. Without missing a beat, she replied, “Thank you, Mr. President, but no, I’ve seen enough.” She was, according to Chirac, “a little bit the grandmother to all of us.”
Madame Calment is remarkable for both her longevity and spirit, making us wonder about the possible connection between how long we live and how well we live. Her life stands in stark contrast to many common assumptions and prejudices about aging. At age 65, she had only lived half her life. As longevity increases, how will we live in the decades past 60? What will our aging be like, and how do we keep our brains active and alive? Perhaps more importantly, how do we live our lives to optimize our later years? Before we begin our exploration, let’s examine some of our assumptions.
WHAT IS AGING?
How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
Satchel Paige
We all share the experience of material things wearing out and eventually becoming obsolete. Our cars, clothes, and furniture start out as shiny new additions to our lives but gradually become tattered, fall out of fashion, and get moved to the garage before their final journey to the trash. These everyday experiences become unconscious metaphors that shape our understanding of our physical and social worlds. Our common sense then guides us to believe that humans start out as fresh and desirable, reach their peak in young adulthood, and gradually decline into obsolescence. The more we desire the new and dispose of the old, the more this becomes the way we think of one another and eventually ourselves.
It appears to me that consumer culture and our prejudices about aging are tightly interwoven. The media bombards us with messages of how bad it is to be slow, wrinkled, and out of shape. Older adults mostly appear in advertisements for arthritis, shingles, and erectile dysfunction when not being told they need life insurance to avoid being a burden to their children. Given our present cultural values, it becomes self-evident that aging is undesirable and something to be avoided at all costs. Thus, we spend more money on plastic surgery, beauty aids, and diets than we do caring for the elders we will someday become.
Few prejudices in current Western society are more powerful than those concerning aging. And although scientists strive for objectivity, they harbor the same prejudices and biases as everyone else, searching for what they unconsciously expect to find. Because so much of what was known about the aging brain came from the study of dementia, the assumption was that the story of aging is a tale of loss and decline.
For generations, neuroscientists taught us that we are born with all the neurons we will ever possess, that critical developmental periods, once passed, were lost forever, and that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Because of all this, much of what I was taught in school about the aging brain was steeped in untested assumptions and outdated ideas. These assumptions were so pervasive that only recently have scientists begun to even look at the brains of older adults who are leading active and productive lives.
Although it was known that new information could be learned throughout life, I was taught that brain development and neural plasticity were synonymous with the study of small children. In fact, positive adaptive changes in the brain were thought to cease after childhood. Fortunately, we are no longer certain about any of these “truths.” For example, we know that new neurons do continue to grow in the human brain throughout life, and, as you will soon learn, the way that the brain processes information changes throughout life in line with traditional shifts in social expectations and responsibilities.
At first these revelations surprised and amazed me. But it didn’t take long to realize that they made complete sense. Of course we continue to grow new neurons. Dramatic changes in our attitudes, actions, and social roles must be related to changes within the brain. As these ideas continued to fill my mind, they led to the question: What if our assumption about the adult brain as a gathering of loss was just an extension of our negative associations about aging?
THE TIMELESS SELF
The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven’t changed in 70 or 80 years. And that, of course, causes great confusion.
Doris Lessing
That our brains change throughout life makes sense; that all of the changes are negative makes no sense. The simple fact that many individuals accomplish amazing things later in life defies the pessimistic dogma that has guided neuroscience for so long. What if, just like during adolescence, the brain goes through a series of modifications that prepare us for the challenges and responsibilities of each stage of life? What if the human brain progresses through a number of adaptive incarnations while our identity and sense of self remain the same?
The experience of aging is both a personal and deeply subjective experience that we seldom talk about. We complain about aches and pains and compare notes about the best doctors, but avoid exploring the landscape of our actual experience. To further complicate matters, we don’t necessarily feel older. Rather, we are informed of our age by how others treat us and the heat generated by the number of candles on our birthday cake. People begin calling us ma’am and sir and offer to carry our groceries to the car. There is a point where you no longer just “look great”—you “look great for your age.”
As a child, I remember my grandmother stopping as she passed a mirror. She would peer inquisitively at her image as if looking into an alien world. Sometimes she would press her cheeks, lift her forehead, and stare at the soft brown eyes looking back at her. “What are you doing, Nana?” I once asked. At first, she was startled by my intrusion into her private world, but eventually she began to share her thoughts. “When I go by the mirror, I expect to see one person, but instead, I see someone else,” she said, “so I get scared and try to find myself. If I look long and hard enough, I can find myself, but it takes awhile. I know I’m getting old, but I can’t seem to get used to the idea that I no longer look like me.”
Having no idea what she was talking about, I naively asked her who she thought she should look like. Instead of answering, she retreated to her bedroom and, after some rummaging, returned with a colorized photograph of a young girl dressed in the style of the 1920s. She had a teasing half-smile, a slight tilt of the head, and a gleam in her eyes. She handed it to me proudly and said, “This is the face I expect to see when I look in the mirror.”
Now I was even more confused. Why would anyone as beautiful as my grandmother want to look like some stupid girl in weird clothes? “Why would you want to look like that girl, Nana?” I asked. “You’re much prettier.” She smiled and rubbed my head. “Thank you honey, but this is a picture from when I was 19. This was taken a few years before I met your grandfather, and all the boys wanted to take me dancing. For some reason, this picture got frozen in my mind. No matter how old I get, I still expect to see this girl when I look in the mirror.” While her explanation made no sense to me at the time, I remember her words when I pass a mirror and find some strange old fellow looking back at me.
The fact that the experience of the self is ageless leaves us dependent upon feedback from the outer world to mark the passage of time. Like my grandmother, we must look into the mirrors available around us to reflect the passing years. These mirrors include the media, cultural beliefs, all kinds of prejudices, and our changing appearance and physical health. As with most aspects of life, our assumptions and the messages we receive influence our personal experience of aging. How wonderful it would have been for my grandmother to see herself as I saw her.
In contrast to past centuries, many of us are now looking at life expectancies well beyond 80. And while full retirement at age 65 may have been a reasonable goal of past generations, changes in longevity, economics, and culture are leading us to reconsider the meaning of being an older adult. Luckily, some of us have jobs that use our intellectual rather than our physical strength, allowing us to work longer and better than previous generations. These changes will only become greater in the future as more jobs become information based and the routine tasks of everyday life become increasingly automated. We also have the benefit of scientific discoveries that are beginning to unlock some of the secrets of aging. But if we are living and working longer, we need to take a hard look at aging, rethink what it is, and decide what we want to do with it.
It is our good fortune that the current generation reaching their 60s is not known for accepting dogma or following in the footsteps of others. As adolescents and young adults, we participated in antiwar activism, feminism, the civil rights movement, free love, and the use of mind-altering drugs. We are rethinking retirement and the role of older adults in family and society. It is up to all of us to create a new meaning of aging that will guide our culture in more positive ways in the years to come. We are well positioned to participate in a new revolution—a revolution of perspective on both aging and the brain.
MAINTAINING A HEALTHY BRAIN
We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell
Although the focus of this book is attachment, I will begin by exploring the evolution, development, and functioning of the brain. This will serve as a foundation for a positive reframing of lifelong development in the context of relationships. We will shift from thinking about the brain as an individual biological structure trapped in one’s skull to the brain as a social organ linking us to one another. From this perspective, relationships of all kinds will take center stage in the growth, regulation, and direction of each individual’s biological, psychological, and social development. We will be exploring parenting, grandparenting, marriage, and other significant relationships to look at their impact on our health and longevity.
We will consider the life of the brain, the emergence of wisdom, and the implications of recent neuroscientific findings for our day-to-day lives. Through each chapter, we will shuttle back and forth between a focus on the brain and various social sciences in an attempt to grasp how each helps us to understand the other. The research on health and longevity most of us are already familiar with will be tied to the evolution of the social brain and the role our individual health plays in the survival of our relatives and our tribes. As we go along, we will find that many of the disconnected facts related to brain health make more sense when seen in the context of how the social brain evolved.
Far back into our deep history, human tribes needed elders to be responsible for preserving history, peace making in times of conflict, and nurturing the young. The older members of the tribe were sought out for practical and spiritual guidance and were in charge of the transition rituals from one stage of life to the next. We will look at the ways that the brain changes in how it processes information as we age and how these changes serve to enhance the performance of older adults in these traditional social roles. A considerable amount of time will be spent examining the nature and origins of wisdom, its role in culture, and the changes in brain functioning that make it possible. My goal is to present a unified vision of aging, grounded in relationships and expressed in lived experience—one that will increase understanding, inspire hope, and provide clues about who we are as a species and what we might do to thrive in our later years.