Unlocking the Secrets of Aging Well

Reflections on good health, living longer, luck, and joy at 91

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Last week, I was complaining to a friend about the cold weather that was keeping me inside for yet another day. She said to me, “Well, Katharine, you are old.’’ I snapped back, “Ouch, that really hurts.” She said, “Just kidding,” and then went on to tell me that she is a few years younger than I am. I was stunned that calling me old to my face could pack such a negative wallop. After all, my mission for the last ten years has been to promote the good news about aging today, but clearly, I still hold some ageist beliefs myself.

Why we elders continue to find the term old so off-putting. It seems to evoke only negative associations such as frailty, sickness, and decline. We never mention wisdom, experience, and kindness.

Yet we all — every one of us — want to age well. Now I find myself asking, “So, what does it actually mean to be aging well?”

Healthy Aging

I will start with the well part of aging well. Of course, dear readers, we know what we should do: not smoke, eat a healthy diet, exercise, and visit the dentist and doctor regularly. However, the specific list of dos and don’ts is endless and impossible to follow entirely.

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In addition, the recommendations keep changing, such as the new food pyramid guidelines from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This leaves us feeling confused and uncertain.

Making healthy choices can be complicated and hard. For decades, advertisements talked about the benefits of smoking. Then, in 1964, the Surgeon General announced that smoking was definitively linked to lung cancer deaths. Even back then, when we trusted the experts, it still took me five years to quit smoking.

Today, there are other problems with our healthcare system. It is often difficult to get a doctors appointment that isn’t months away. I often think back on my time working with UNICEF in Bangladesh, where the dentist for the poorest patients was a man sitting on a rug in a park with a pair of pliers. This experience makes me grateful for our healthcare system, flawed as it is, and for the many options available to me.

We often think of health as an individual responsibility. We assume our health depends on our behaviors and the choices we make, but it is not that simple.

Living longer

Most of us are living much longer lives than ever before in history. The average life expectancy is 79 in the US, compared to just 65 years in 1934. On average, we are living 40 years longer than people did during the time of Thomas Jefferson. The question becomes: has our quality of life improved as well?

Geography alone can have a significant impact on life expectancy and quality of life, even within the US. For instance, in Chicago, there is a thirty-year gap in average life expectancy between two neighborhoods — Streeterville and Englewood. How do we explain this disparity?

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Living in an environment with undesirable conditions creates a cumulative disadvantage and daily difficulties for both younger and older people. Those with fewer financial resources, often minorities, who are exposed to more pollution, attend underfunded public schools, face safety issues in their neighborhoods, have limited access to healthy food, and lack reliable public transportation, tend to die sooner than their counterparts.

Our lifespan is determined by so much more than our individual choices. (I’d like to add, allowing this blatant inequality for our elder population is actually a form of ageism.)

Luck

I have been reflecting on how much depends on good luck. Most of us are lucky: we were born with good genes, without a serious disease or other disability. People in their seventies and eighties have survived numerous near-fatal events. For instance, when I was twenty-one, I was driving in a snowstorm when suddenly a car barreled toward me from the wrong side of the road and didn’t stop. It plowed right into the front of my car, shattering the window. I needed stitches on my face and even some on my eyelid. I’ve always felt grateful to survive.

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When Napoleon was considering candidates for promotion to the highest ranks, he would always ask his generals an unusual question: “Is he lucky?” I don’t think that Napoleon was superstitious; rather, he understood that people who appear to have been lucky in life are individuals who have consistently made wise decisions over the years.

I think Napoleon was on to something, but it’s not so much about good luck-bad luck. It turns out that being lucky and good judgment are closely related. What looks like luck is a series of good decisions. Aging well is about having good judgment, too.

Joy

Our attitude matters too. A well-known study found that, on average, individuals with a positive outlook on aging live seven and a half years longer than those who hold negative views. In my experience, I have also observed that those of us who adapt well to changing limitations are more able to enjoy life than those who fuss about their walkers or hearing aids. Rather than focusing on a half-empty glass, they remain grateful for everything that is still working. They no longer feel the pressure to achieve more.

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Aging well, then, is always a multi-determined event: genes, where we live, the choices we make, the choices others make, luck, and embracing a joyful outlook. My vision and hope for all of us as we age is that we will reach a point where we will sit back, relax, and savor the pleasures of being old — spending time with family and friends, watching the birds, and just being. Finally, may we be able to say to each other: “I am old, and I am enjoying it.”

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#aging #health #longevity #psychology #oldage #ageism #mindset

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