CHAPTER TWENTY

Connect and Commit

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One of the nicest things that I have taken away from my years of working with Harry is the sense of the existence, power and pervasiveness of our limbic brains and the importance of the emotional life. When I was a kid—and all through college, law school and my years as a lawyer—there was a tacit assumption that reason, the thinking mind, should always prevail. The only life—for individuals, companies and nations—was the rational life. There was an unspoken but fierce notion that if we could just get emotions out of the way, then, by God, life would be okay. Or at least a lot better.

Perhaps that was a sign of the times. After all, I grew up during an era when the thinking brain was not exactly in the saddle . . . the rise of Nazi Germany, lunatic racism in Europe and at home, and semi-tribal madness all over the place, culminating in World War II and the Cold War. Terrifying. I was around for the reigns of Hitler and Stalin, who were obviously crazy as bedbugs, yet wildly, inexplicably popular.

Want to see Harry’s limbic resonance in a slightly different light? Take a look at a film of a Hitler speech in the 1930s. . . and don’t miss the radiant faces in the crowd. Or watch Goebbels ask a hundred thousand folk, “Do you want the TOTAL WAR?” As he regularly did. His voice breaks on the last, rising scream . . . “den TOTALEN KRIEG?” And the crowd screams back, “Yes,” in a desperate frenzy. And they got it, too; we all did. This is limbic resonance at the level of madness. And even after Hitler and Stalin were gone, there seemed an excellent chance that some successor lunatic would blow us all to smithereens with atomic bombs. People laugh, looking back, at the Eisenhower years. . . the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, and the profound appetite for order and reason at any price. But it made a lot of sense in the 1950s. We’d had enough limbic fun to last a lifetime.

No, we hadn’t. It doesn’t work that way. The order we craved—and got for a while—was also suffocating, stultifying and, yes, crazy-making in its own way, for the simple reason that, at the core, we are irreversibly emotional creatures. Rational, sure, but if we ignore our emotional sides even for a short time we will get sick. So, a conundrum: too much emotion and we go crazy; too little emotion and we get sick. And go crazy. Which sounds confusing but really isn’t. As long as we know how we work and who we really are on these fronts, we can balance and cope. But the point of this chapter is not balance . . . it is alerting us all to the tremendous importance of the emotional life and of being connected and committed to others. It is that which we are more apt to forget or downplay in this age of reason (and as we age) and it is not a good idea.

As Harry eloquently points out, we are hardwired to be emotional creatures and yet we ignore our emotional side—especially the utter necessity for mammals of operating in packs and pairs and staying deeply in touch—at our peril. Personally, I find that a relief and a comfort—a coming together of my theoretical world view and reality. I can think pretty straight and even act rationally, if I must, but I am also profoundly emotional and it is relaxing in a way to know that that is a critical part of life, too. People talk censoriously about Bill Clinton and his divided character. Puh-lease . . . I am surprised that we all don’t spend half our time rolling around on the floor together and licking each other’s faces. It’d suit me. About half the time. The other half the time, no. But it is a relief to know that we do not get “better,” as I was taught, when we become less than emotional creatures . . . we shrink and we die.

You have had some of this from Harry, but I am so struck by some of the population studies that I want to give you a couple more, just to drive the point home. There are hundreds of these studies, by the way. If you’re interested in reading more, a good place to look is a terrific book by Dean Ornish, the heart and diet doctor, called Love and Survival. His premise is that love saves lives. He’s right.

Here’s one example. There was a famously misguided effort early in the last century, when germ theory was new (and Sherlock Holmes was teaching that reason could solve all problems), to create a germ-free environment in nurseries for orphans. In the most advanced of these institutions, the foundlings were placed in aggressively sterile cubicles and never picked up or touched by anyone unless it was absolutely necessary. And they died in droves. In a 1915 study of ten such institutions, all the babies under two died. All of them. Being picked up, held and cuddled turns out to be essential to life. Love saves lives.

It is our mammalian character at work here, as you now know, and it works just as well for lesser mammals as for us. Rabbits, for instance. In one wonderful study, rabbits were stacked in cages up to the ceiling. They were being jammed full of cholesterol or something to study plaque buildup, but there were some anomalous results. The rabbits in the lower tiers did much better than the ones up high. Turns out the lab attendant loved animals. And she was short. She patted and fussed over the ones she could reach. And they had 60 percent less plaque in their veins than the ones up high. To check their suspicions, the scientists swapped the rabbits around, high for low. And the ones that were now reachable also prospered. It was the patting and touching, no question about it. Harry tells me that one has to be careful about drawing human inferences from animal studies, but my guess is, if you want less plaque, less blacky carbon and gummy sludge, get someone to pat you. If he’s short, sit down.

While we’re talking mammals, you may want to remember that any mammalian contact helps. A study of recent heart attack victims also kept track of who did and who did not have a dog. As Harry mentioned in the previous chapter, the no-dog people were much more likely to die of a second heart attack than the dog owners. I sometimes used to get impatient with Aengus, our insanely demanding Weimaraner. But after I read these dog/health studies I went and got him a treat, which he took as his right, like everything else.

Here’s the best one. There was a California study of women with metastatic breast cancer. They were divided into two groups, one of which met once a week for ninety minutes, for just six weeks, to talk about their cancer, how they were doing, and so on. The control group did not. The support group sessions weren’t long, but there was intense bonding among the women. Not to put too fine a point on it, they came to love and care for one another. And guess what? The women in the support group lived twice as long as the women in the control group. Twice as long. Pretty big returns from a pretty modest investment in connection and commitment to one another.

It goes on and on. Studies showing that the lonely are twice as likely to have ulcers. Studies showing that unmarried men are two or even three times as likely to die of heart attacks as their married brethren. It is less true for women than for men, very possibly because women do so much better at creating networks of friends and other family, but it is true enough for women to act on it. Population studies are notoriously difficult to rely on. You can find one for almost any proposition. But there’s no denying the logic of these studies, taken as a whole. Human contact, intimacy, is critical to good health. And the absence of it is devastating. Love saves lives.

This Society Makes It Hard

Isolation—which is one of the great perils in the Next Third—is hard. And in recent decades this society has done a lot to make it harder, not easier. Think of the big societal changes in my lifetime, starting with the family. When I was a kid in the 1930s and ’40s, families were real, they were big, and they were very, very important. You knew who you were and where you stood because, most of the time, you were up to your armpits in family.

In my case, that meant three loving sisters and two parents who did not get divorced, plus a rich supporting cast of other relatives, many of whom lived with us at one time or another. My two grandmothers lived with us for a long time. And during the war Uncle Ben and his whole family moved in, because he was hard up. (Pa was the successful one and just assumed it was his job to take everyone in.) Later on, Uncle Esmond, whose life wasn’t great, lived with us for his last five or six years. My sisters spent lots of time up in Castine with Aunt Kitty, the writer I mentioned at the beginning of the book. One of her conscious goals was to make her house in Maine “a haven for children and lovers,” which she did. She also made the business of being an aunt into a conscious art form, and my sisters and cousins adore her and talk about her to this day.

At our house, as at hers, the notion of openness went beyond immediate family. In the mid-1940s, a friend of Ben’s, a funny New Yorker named Max Schwebel, simply moved in, for reasons that are still unclear. I think he had done something for Ben, and Pa was devoted to Ben. Anyhow, there he was at the dining room table for almost a year: “the man who came to dinner,” we joked. Awful good company, though. And there was distant cousin Edward, a six-foot-five Seabee, Cousin Emma’s boy, who turned up at our door at age eighteen during the war and stayed after, when he was in college. Then there were all the relatives who lived nearby and were constantly in and out of the house. Aunt Kitty, of course. And Pa’s sister Gladys, who was married to Mother’s brother Fergus. Think we saw a little of them and their kid? I guess. Oh, and dogs, too. Six big black Newfoundlands at one point. Plenty of cats. And a pig for a while. For the war effort, you know. The whole thing was a limbic feast, I tell you, and a joy for all of us.

If I could resurrect a household like that, I would do it in a heartbeat and never worry again about what to do in retirement. I’d just run the hotel. Cook the meals, call out the amusements and make sure everyone got enough pats. One of my long-term projects is to see if I can’t do something like that before it’s too late. A handmade retirement community for some of our close pals and relatives. We’ll see. Hilary and I bought our big old house in the Berkshires with something vaguely like that in mind. Fill the sucker up with people and pets . . . sit in the limbic bathtub all day long.

Another societal change that makes retirement less cozy is the weakening of small city and town life. Towns like Salem, Massachusetts, where I grew up, have not ceased to exist, but the guts have been sucked out of them by the malls and the super-stores and the fast-food places. When I was a kid, a small city like Salem was the authentic center of its world. Locally owned and locally operated, for the good of those who lived there. We knew everyone, or at least Pa did. Cops, teachers, people in the stores and a lot of the folks on the sidewalks.

People stayed put more than they do today. My relatives had lived in Salem and surrounding towns since the seventeenth century, most of them. All of them, in fact, except for one courageous Irish grandfather who showed up in Danvers, two hundred years later, to revitalize us all. Today, I’m in New York, two of my kids live on the west coast, my sisters are down south and only two of my relatives live within a hundred miles of Salem. I’m grateful I left and lived the life I’ve lived so far. It’s been fascinating and a world of fun. But I tell you, there are prices to be paid. Some of them are coming due now.

Maybe my family had it a bit thicker than some, but seventy years ago most people lived in towns and in families something like mine. And we all left. We just up and left. And changed the whole country. We left to start our nuclear families and move to impersonal cities like New York or L.A. Where we could maybe make love to strangers or make more money. Get more stuff. And not know much of anyone outside of work and a small circle of pals. Funny thing to do, wasn’t it?

Small wonder, then, that we gobble up books about traditional societies, like Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence, about a part of France where everyone knows everyone else and is in and out of one another’s life all the time. Small wonder that we want to sit with Frances Mayes in her home Under the Tuscan Sun, in a part of rural Italy where the commitment to work is so much weaker and the commitment to family and community is so profound. Small wonder that we spend hundreds of hours watching reruns of Friends or Seinfeld, where the characters live rich, interconnected lives. We miss the connection of family and friends, so we watch surrogates, hour after hour, on television. Often alone.

Television is a little like those experiments where they put an orphaned baby chimp in a cage with a clock wrapped in a pillow . . . see how he does. And the poor little thing hugs it all day long, because it has a “heartbeat” and he hopes that maybe it’s his mother. And because he’s so damn lonely. We watch life on TV like that chimp with the clock in the pillow. Makes you weep, if you think about it.

All right, that’s enough heartbreak. What do you do about it? Well, do what women have always done: forge close bonds with lovers, friends and family. Get more rather than less involved in community groups and projects. If your time isn’t already eaten up with work, family and friends—and an awful lot of women are going to be working for much of the Next Third—do volunteer stuff. Get involved. And, as Harry says, we’re not talking about writing checks here. We’re talking about you dishing out the food at the soup kitchen . . . you suggesting and starting the new organization to do something that urgently needs doing . . . you offering your own time and energy and caring to get important stuff done.

Limbic Giants: The Role of Grandmothers and Aunts

Talking about the possibility of limbic connections in the Next Third, there is almost nothing more obvious, important and satisfying in that line than the business of being a grandparent. Or an aunt. If you have grandchildren, investing heavily in that relationship is one of the smartest and most satisfying things you can do. First of all, it could scarcely be more important to them, the kids. In a society where families are increasingly nuclear and distracted . . . where children see more of their Game Boys than their relatives . . . it is terribly important to remind them that they come from somewhere besides that nuclear core. It is so important to have that sense of roots. We all hunger for it.

Do you remember, back in the “kedging” chapter, how I mentioned going up to Stowe, Vermont, as a kid in 1941 with Mother and seeing “the Bigelow Girls,” the old Quakers who had helped to raise her, long before my birth, in another century? That trip was sixty-five years ago, and I still think about it often. As I said then, the sense of that Vermont farm—and other family farms like it—purred away in memory, just below the surface, making me feel a little less scared. That’s what that’s all about, the sense of rootedness. The sense of coming from somewhere, of permanence . . . of coming from a tribe that goes back beyond your immediate life. And you can give that sense to your grandchildren, just by spending time with them and being kind. What a gift.

I don’t know how good you are at “kind”; I could be better. But it’s pretty easy to be kind to those grandchildren. They’re not “yours” in the sense that you have to worry about disciplining them and all that. You don’t have to judge them, ever, which their parents must do. But they are “yours” in the nice sense that they came from you, and they hunger for your company. Just be there, and you’re doing a hell of a job. Oh, and be interested and kind.

My mother was a brilliant grandmother, one of the best I’ve seen. All her grandkids absolutely revered her. Her one great trick was that she never judged them. Ever. Up at that place on the island in New Hampshire I sometimes talk about, all the grandchildren would troop down to see her, on their own, every single day, all summer long. Usually, several times a day. Sometimes they’d just touch base . . . “Hi, Granny.” In and out. Sometimes they’d hang for a while . . . watch her paint or whatever. They hungered for her company . . . loved to know she was there. They still do. Love to know she was there, even though she’s been dead for twenty years. They have a better sense of who they are, and of their own worth, because they know they came from her and that she valued them so much. You can do that for someone.

Incidentally, if you are an aunt, rather than a grandmother, the potential and the importance of the relationship are the same. I mentioned my Aunt Kitty, the one who wrote The Little Locksmith. Well, she did not marry until later in life, and she never had children. However, she took the business of being an aunt with utter seriousness . . . thought it was one of the important roles in life and acted accordingly. I was too young, but my three sisters spent a lot of time with her and absolutely adored her. She had the great gift of treating them like equals (she was about their size, which helped) and never condescended. That’s a trick. My sisters are in their eighties now, and when we’re together they mention Aunt Kitty, oh, once a week. And don’t think for a second that Aunt Kitty didn’t get just as much out of it as she gave. Probably more.

Oh, and don’t forget to touch them, those grandchildren and nieces and nephews. Remember the story about the girl who picked up the rabbits in the research place? Do that for your grandchildren. Pick ’em up. Hug ’em. Set ’em on your lap and fool with their hair. Hold their hands when you read to them. Limbic loops, man. Making limbic loops is a good use of our time. And kids love ’em.

Don’t Retire at All

Here’s another idea—maybe a necessity—which we hear about all the time. Keep on working until you drop at your regular job or as close to it as you can manage. It’s particularly appealing for men: if the job is the flywheel of life, just don’t let go. But it works for women, too. And often it has to, because there’s not enough dough to live on. Or there will not be when you’re too old to work unless you do something now. Whether amusing or not, whether part-time or full, work seems to give great satisfaction, even to the very old. Almost everyone who does it seems to like it. Not all, but an awful lot. And it doesn’t seem to matter much what the work is. The other night, we went to a restaurant I’ve gone to forever. I said hello to Jimmy, the bartender, a nice guy in his early seventies whom I’ve known for twenty years. I told him how this book was coming along and remarked on his good health and cheerfulness. Without waiting for the question, he said, “Work. No question about it. I don’t have to be, but I’m here three nights a week and it keeps me going.”

I forget where I saw a piece . . . 60 Minutes, I think . . . about a factory that makes it a practice to hire old people, mostly women. Including some really old women. Works wonderfully for both employer and employed, apparently. The test of whether they’re too old is whether they can walk up the steps. That’s it. If they can walk up the steps, they can keep on working. And they do. I think the people who run that business are geniuses, and they should be imitated.

Same advice from a very different quarter. My law firm mentor, who has been one of the joys of my life for the last forty years, turned ninety-five last night (as I write this) and what a joy that was for the hundreds of friends and family. He gave a speech that any top lawyer in the country today would have been proud of. And warm? Wow! He’s a legendary litigator, but he has more limbic force than a room full of golden retrievers. What a knack.

It was no surprise when a former associate and longtime friend gave a toast remembering her first year practicing with him. She had had a baby on the eve of a big trial, but trials are trials and eight days later she was in a hotel in Utica or some damn place with my mentor, the new baby and some help. Trying the case. Remember, this man was born in 1910, and she assumed he might have a little trouble with this scenario, as much as he needed her. Not a bit of it. He went into limbic overdrive without giving it a thought. Tried the case, helped some with the baby and made her feel absolutely terrific. She adored him all the rest of her life. Me, too.

Anyhow, when I first started on this project, I asked his advice generally. He didn’t miss a beat. “Work!” he said with his usual intensity. “You have to have jobs or you’ll die. I had to retire at seventy, but I’ve kicked around and dug up these projects: that environmental business [a pro bono suit to preserve the Hudson River], my little library [fund-raising and planning and politicking to build a public library], and so on. It keeps me alive. That and the boat. Thanks partly to you. I can’t tell you how much that boat still means to me.”

The boat is a nice story. He loves to sail, but in his mid-eighties he decided to sell it. It was getting to be too much for him.

“You know,” he said, “I could be cranking a winch and slip and go over the side.”

I paused for a few beats and said, “So what?”

He laughed for a long time. And kept the boat. He still sails it all the time. At ninety-five. So hobbies count, too.

Another irrelevant piece. He damn near died a few years ago, and when he recovered I asked him what it had been like and was he scared. He paused a moment, interested in the question. Then, “No, not really. I was concerned, of course, but oddly enough it wasn’t particularly scary.” He shrugged. “It seemed . . . all right. It wasn’t a surprise. It was just . . . I don’t know, I don’t think about it much.” Later, when we were about to break off, he said, “Listen, be sure to tell them about work. I know you’re big on exercise. I am, too. But work, a project, that’s the thing!”

One of the hard things about the “work” solution is that even mildly successful people are used to having a certain responsibility, whether in an office or at home, that’s hard to get in a retirement-type job. The work is not as intense, and there can be a fair amount of envelope licking. Well, get over yourself. My mentor gave his last great “oral argument” to the board of a tiny library in his little town. Did a great job, too. Blew their socks off, I’m told. So think about regular volunteer work. It is one of the most satisfying things a lot of people do, and it does them a world of good. One study on the subject showed that those who did volunteer work once a week during the study period were two and a half times less likely to die. Dr. Ornish draws a nice conclusion: “Just as chronic stress can suppress your immune function, altruism, love, and compassion may enhance it.” You have all read your Harry, so you are not surprised by this. But isn’t it fascinating how closely our limbic lives are tied into our physical health as well as happiness? Limbic brain, hard at work.

There’s a lot to be said for a paying job. You know you’re appreciated when you’re paid for it. And Lord knows, all of us are short of dough in retirement. Most part-time jobs are pretty modest, and for me it would be hard to get over my ego. But I think I’m wrong about that. A fancy pal of mine drives a school bus. My wonderful brother-in-law, a graduate of Harvard and a Navy Cross fighter pilot in World War II, is in his late eighties and is bagging groceries in Florida. He loves it. Loves the contact, loves having something to do. And is glad to have the few bucks. One of the nicest men in America, an authentic hero, and he’s bagging groceries. They love him in the store. Why wouldn’t they?

One promising area: the schools. They need aides, and they certainly need mentors. One of the traditional things for the elderly is the care and guidance of the young, and we could all do worse than to have a finger in that important work.

Have a Second Life, Using the Other Side of Your Brain

Personally, I think there is much to be said for making a job out of your hobby or your private passion. More specifically, do something entirely new and different. If, for example, you have even the trace of the artist in you, nurse it along and live in a different world for a while.

I particularly like the idea of using a different side of your brain, different gifts, in a different part of your life. A number of us had to suppress something in us to be successful at something else. Many of us gave up the book or the painting or the study to be lawyers or teachers or parents. Well, take a look and see if there’s anything left of that abandoned side of you. I have a pal who has become a good watercolorist. Travels all over the place to paint, and loves it. Another has become a guide at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Others write, and several have become scholars.

Turning to the other side of your brain does not necessarily mean the arts. All it means is that it’s different. And it will nourish you. New, different. Like rotating crops in your fields. Rotate your crops. You’ll get a better yield.

Make a Job Out of Your Social Life

Women are good at this, too, but even women have to work at it. There is a terrible temptation for all of us, as we age, to close up shop and narrow our lives. Well, don’t. It’s killing us, for the reasons Harry explained. We have to “exercise” our social, pack-animal gifts as vigorously as we exercise our bodies, if we’re going to lick that pesky tide. That means adding friends, doing more stuff, getting out there and being involved. (If you need inspiration, go back and read about my friend Jessica in Chapter Two.) And nurturing and preserving the friends we have. Same, of course, with family members. They’re not all perfect, and we tend to get a little more judgmental and petulant when we get older. We’re tempted to say, the hell with so-and-so. Well, don’t; we can’t afford to lose a one. You remember how Old Fred used to howl at you for being on the phone all the time? Well, he was wrong. Get back on the phone. Call everyone. Use e-mail. Connect and commit.

Just Say “Yes”

There’s a terrible temptation to say “no” to stuff as we get older. It’s a hassle to do this or that. We don’t really need to. Except of course, that we do. We need to do almost anything that gets us involved with other people. Because, as you now know, connection saves lives. So, default to “yes” when anyone suggests doing something or asks for help. Say “yes” to the dinner party, “yes” to the request for help organizing the potato race. Say “yes” to everything.

Simple example: A while ago I was asked to head up my fiftieth high school reunion. Well, there’s a dull, thankless job. Besides, I didn’t have the very best time of my life in high school and had not stayed in touch with many of my school friends. I said “yes” anyhow. And made a real meal of it. Wrote lots and lots of letters and hundreds of e-mails, made dozens of phone calls, and so on. Even organized six pre-reunion dinners around the country. Surprised myself. Met some new people and reconnected with some old ones. It was a lot of work, and it may not have made much difference in the grand scheme of things, but I loved it.

Shy Girl

If you’re shy, you may think: It’s all well and good for him, thumping about like a golden retriever, to talk about defaulting to yes, going out and doing things without a care . . . but I can’t do that. It’s painful for me to be in company. It’s painful to say yes, to go to lunch or dinner or to this party or that. What am I supposed to do?

Well, I have no idea, since I am, as you say, a golden retriever, with a dog’s limited vision. But I think the rule is the same. I think you default to yes. You “get over it,” as people like me so cruelly, casually, say. You take a deep breath and make the connection, say yes to the offhand invitation . . . make the offer yourself, with whatever horror such an idea evokes. And try to bear in mind that, to the golden retriever, shy is infinitely interesting, infinitely surprising and strange. The dog wants to nuzzle you, to lick your face . . . see what this is all about. I spent an awful lot of time, over the years of my rottenness, with shy girls, endlessly fascinated, charmed by their distance, their remove.

I remember seeing an acquaintance standing in the hall outside a big cocktail party years ago. She was literally gathering her courage. As if anyone cared whether she went in or not. I was flabbergasted . . . asked her to dinner on the spot. We’re still friends, all these years later. True, we’re not close any more, but that, I submit, is okay. Get involved anyway. Have lunch with the woman. Go to the church supper, where the “barriers to entry” are probably lower. Go to the movie with the guy. Don’t think of yourself as pathetic, think of yourself as brave. Which you are. Connection is as valuable for you as for anyone else . . . more so. So say yes to whatever comes up. Or make things come up, if you can bear it.

I once had an accountant, Smart Barbara, who was “legally shy.” That was the joke we made later on when we became close pals. We got past the shyness eventually and had about as much fun together as I’ve ever had. She was so smart . . . there was so much going on in there . . . so much to talk about and do. Try to bear in mind, shyness is an aphrodisiac to some. So, painful or not, you should default to yes, even more than your boisterous sisters. That’s my brutish advice. Just do it. And if you are rejected or forgotten by this one or that, fine. Get over it and do it again. You are a mammal, and you have your needs.

Be the Organizer

Take it a step beyond the default-to-yes mode, and be the one who suggests stuff. Be the one who does the asking. You’ve got the time. So start making the calls and don’t get irritable because your pals say “yes” and then forget about it. Keep after them, make it happen. You’re building a life here. There’s nothing wrong with the fact that it’s hard. Of course it’s hard. Look at the stakes . . . what did you expect?

All it takes is one person or one couple to make big stuff happen. You know the bike group I talk about all the time? We’re in our twelfth year now, and it’s one of the best things a lot of us do all year. It’s all the result of an idea and a lot of work by a single couple, and much of the work has been done by one woman. The two of them thought it up, but he’s working more or less full time so she does the heavy lifting. She makes all the phone calls. She organizes the food, the lodgings, the transport. And we go. Well, there’s no magic to it. Sure, she’s a forceful woman with more than the standard ration of charm, but it’s just initiative, hard work and, okay, charm. Do it. What else are you doing with your time that’s so much more important? Let me take a guess: nothing.

Incidentally, money is not a big part of all this. Organizing a bike group—or a cross-country ski group or a swimming group—is not money-intensive. It can be done at any level you want. It’s the work and the drive that are hard to come by, and they’re free. In general, there’s little correlation between having dough and having a rich social life. After all, kids right out of college are best at it, and they don’t have a dime. What they do have is a huge incentive—to meet and make love to one another. Well, you do, too. Maybe not to make love to one another, but to put together the groups—to make the connections that are going to save you in the Next Third. So go to work. Start a bike group, a book group, a poker night, a yoga club, a political action group. Any damn thing. It all counts.

Another thing that counts is the spiritual side of life. Harry and I are perfectly aware of how important it is in your life and ours, but for once we did not have the confidence, the presumption, to take it on. And besides, that’s a book all of its own, not a chapter in this one. Suffice it to say that a meaningful, spiritual life may be almost all you need. And it may make everything else you have a lot better.

Well, that’s kind of a cat’s breakfast of ideas, but there may be some nourishment in there somewhere. The one thing I can promise you is that the basic notion—that you should make a steady and deadly serious effort to connect and commit more rather than less as you age—is rock solid. Love saves lives. You’re a mammal. Cuddle up.