Conscious Choice: The Joy of Aging

March 2006

The Joy of Aging

Think growing old is all about deterioration and decay? Well, think again. Some scientists are now saying that as your brain ages, it can actually regenerate brain cells, and the second half of life may be when you are at your creative best for your highest calling

By Marla Donato

As you reach your middle years and beyond, not much about the aging process seems particularly attractive or inspiring. Besides a general wind-down in energy and the threat of being let go at work for younger/cheaper talent, there are all sorts of unwelcome physical surprises that arrive as bumps, bulges and bunions.

A growing array of personal accessories become necessary to do even the most mundane things, such as reading directions to cook rice, because now you need reading glasses. But first you have to find them. That could turn into a time-consuming process, as it’s difficult to remember where you left them, especially if you are a woman experiencing that alarming short-term memory loss that arrives when hormones plunge. This can result in a growing number of “Did I turn off the coffeepot?” moments of indecision on the midway point to work.

Matilda Yoelin, 94, played classical music when she was not working out of her home office on Chicago’s Northwest Side as a full-time real estate attorney.

At home you may find yourself unable to complete simple projects because you now walk in and out of rooms forgetting what you were seeking, only to eventually stumble back upon the desired task without the requisite scissors or phone number, or worse yet, the pet shampoo for the wet, annoyed dog in the bathtub. You fear you are losing your mind, and your 60-something neighbor’s gloomy pronouncement to “Just wait another 20 years. It will only get worse,” plunges you into a deeper despair.

Surely this can’t be. Was life designed to be just one long cruel joke of loss? Were we all destined to degrees of dementia and senility?

This seems especially painful for those of us who pride ourselves on our erudite tongues and now seem doomed to suffer slow vocabulary deaths, desperately grasping for that perfect word, book title, or the name of that painting, artist or song title, as each slowly slips away from us, one by one. This, of course seems all the more cruel, given that we still retain the memory that at one time we knew these things, but just couldn’t remember the exact details at that moment. Ironically, I can’t remember if I’ve just wondered a lot about this last idea, or if I actually read it somewhere.

OK, let’s stop here for a moment and consider: does this midlife brain deterioration make logical sense? Issues of some wear and tear aside, shouldn’t our brains mainly be enhanced by an accumulation of years, rather than diminished by them, especially at midlife? Or more to the point, what is the fateful date or age at which our hard-earned years of experience viciously turn on us to go from an asset to a liability?

Ethel Meltzer, 80, golfed and did aerobics when not caring for family members in her Winnetka home.

Inspired in part by fears about my own aging process, childhood memories of a beloved grandmother, an abiding respect for the acumen displayed by newsroom old-timers, a growing partiality to stories written by freelancers well past the age of 70, and glimpses into some Asian and Native American traditions of respecting sage elders, I set out to discover at one least one wonder of aging in our culture.

This was not an easy task in our youth-obsessed milieu that constantly commands us to Look Younger! Feel Younger! Act Younger!

But after some digging, I am thrilled to report there is apparently some good news about growing old, especially when it comes to personal/spiritual development and wonders of short-term wonders, our brains.

Smarter Older Brains

“Aging is not all about loss,” said Elkhonon Goldberg, confessing to being “relieved that there is a reason for optimism” during a phone interview from his office in New York, where he is a professor of neurology at the New York University School of Medicine and has a private neuropsychology practice. Goldberg is the author of a book entitled, The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Older (Gotham Books, a division of Penguin Books) which was recently released in paperback. (See Conscious Reading).

His book challenges the old college joke we all made upon graduation about going to one-too-many all-night parties, only to enter the workforce with a diminished number of brain cells, which were never to be regained. This was of increasing concern to me when it was confirmed as I sat through pre-med anatomy and physiology classes, as recently as only a few years ago.

Virginia “Ginny” Hogan, 80, a retired schoolteacher, and her husband, a retired judge, were both very active in St. Hilary Catholic Church, on the city’s North Side.

But in the last decade. Goldberg said, there has been a cutting-edge “surge of findings” about “neuroplasticity,” or our ability to develop new neurons, even as we grow older, although it’s a bit of a use-it-or-lose-it proposition. To keep your brain in top shape, not only do you need to stay mentally active, but what you are thinking about also matters. Our neuron-growing ability is affected not just by the extent of mental activity but also by the type of mental activity, Goldberg said. If you want to extend your brain capacity, he added, it’s best to tackle a subject or task that’s “different from what you do for a living, because for most of us, no matter how cognitively (challenging) our work is, it can be routine and repetitive, and we need to (exercise) other parts of the brain also.”

He used the example of Einstein playing a violin, which helped keep his mental chops sharp, so to speak. Goldberg’s next project is to work on developing a new version of software for cognitive enhancement.

His book and work also treads on interesting ground on the subject of how the same brain works in its younger and older years. His findings were in part inspired by a quest to understand why his own brain, which was still highly functional as he moved toward the age of 60, was nevertheless functioning differently than when he was younger. This, he explained, had to do with a shifting emphasis of activity from the right hemisphere (where you take in new or novel information) to the left hemisphere (which recognizes patterns and established procedures).

He noticed that as he aged, “laborious, grinding, focused mental computations” that came easy to him in his 20s, were suddenly more difficult. But in exchange, he had gained a “capacity for instantaneous, almost unfairly easy insight” that he at first cautiously ventured to call “wisdom,” but the scientist in him finally labeled as enhanced “pattern recognition.”

Botox for the Soul?

The idea that our brains are more detailed-oriented when we’re young, and then, better able to notice the relation between things as we age, dovetails nicely with the work of James Hollis, a Zurich-trained analyst. In a phone interview from his office in Texas, where he is the executive director of the Jung Educational Center of Houston, Hollis explained that the first half of life is primarily involved in issues of the struggle for survival and detailed-oriented tasks such as those having to do with employment and raising a family, while much of the second half is concerned with the “spiritual task” of figuring out how you fit into the “big picture.”

Maymita Trejo, 87, a retired civil servant, regularly rode buses from her North Side home in the Wrigleyville neighborhood to the Golf Mill Shopping Center in Niles, where she took organ lessons.

Those who don’t consciously confront this shift may find themselves in the rather uncomfortable so-called midlife crisis, which is just one way for your unconscious desire for meaning to bubble up and ask the question: “Why am I here? … What higher values am I here to serve?” This goes beyond questions of socio-economic roles, and wasn’t much of a concern not so long ago when the average life expectancy was shorter, Hollis said. But today, more people face this dilemma because of the sheer volume of people in our nation’s aging baby boomer population now hitting the autumnal season of life And because of our overall relative affluence as a nation, more people are living longer in relatively good health and with the luxury to explore later-life personal development.

Ready or not, if you live long enough, you can expect to come to this crossroads because, Hollis said, there’s “no botox for the soul.” The only way past this life winkle is to confront these questions head-on, or you most likely will suffer the consequences of depression or try to dull your discontent through addictive substances or distractions.

Ultimately, Hollis said, “It’s not the fear of death that drives us. It’s that we want to live meaningful lives.”

The bad news here is that figuring all this out takes effort, and apparently we still have plenty of work to do to grow up, even as older adults. Hence the title of Hollis’ book: Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally Really Grow Up.

Hollis will give a two-day presentation March 10 and 11 at the C.G. Jung Center in Evanston, where he will explore the questions that lead to developing a sense of personal authority, part of a process that the Jungians call “individuation.” This involves becoming more of what you are meant to be, as dictated by your real self or soul, rather than the role you are expected to play. He also will explore how to strike a better balance “between obligations to others and the self” and how to develop a more “mature spirituality.”

Creative Aging

Jung “truly believed the second half of life was as important as the first, and that it had very different tasks, both psychological and spiritual,” said Jacquelyn A. Mattfeld, the executive director of the Evanston Jung Center. About five years ago, she decided to develop a creative aging program specifically aimed “at the challenges of aging in our society from spiritual and psychological point of view… rather than more practical (matters).” Besides offering regular seminars and partnering with several local colleges including National-Louis University and Oakton Community College to offer courses with titles such as “The Art of Aging,” the center recently sponsored a national conference on later-life creativity. It drew speakers from around the country, including author Thomas Moore and musician Johnny Frigo.

Jacquelyn Mattfeld, 80, became the executive director of the C.J. Jung Center in 2000, after a long distinguished academic career.

“We wanted to look at aging from the creative perspective, rather than talking about your retirement plan or health food,” said Mattfeld. She said attendees were “practically ecstatic and there was a palpable feeling of excitement” because “people are hungry for this… We talked about what gives meaning and purpose in the second half of life, what we know about wisdom, the ways in which people become more creative as they age. This is a totally different way to approaching it.”

She pointed out that centenarians are one of the faster-growing groups. “There are (now) two or three generations of people aged from 50 years on up… That’s a significant portion of all people alive on planet with a need to do and be something more than be a couch potato … or just play golf and games.”

Mattfeld, 80, should know. Before taking on administrative responsibilities at the north suburban center about six years ago, she had an impressive career as an East Coast academic, including serving as a President of Barnard College, and provost and dean at Brown University.

Although she confessed to some frustrations with keeping up with some of the modern computer technology requiring her to change the way she was accustomed to work for decades, she was gamely diving in, and showed no signs of slowing down any time soon. And, according to Mattfeld, there are many advantages to growing older, some surprisingly different from common perceptions, such as the belief that the senior years are a time of loneliness.

“One of the things they have discovered is that (older) people are less lonely. The loneliest people are adolescents and young adults. (Elders) really appreciate relationships more… They need fewer of them… As they grow older, they observe more, and are more deeply engaged in what they are doing… They have capacity to go into more depth, to enjoy a single leaf or a novel that takes a week to read.”

During this second half of life, when you are called to serve something bigger than yourself, you are more likely to want to “leave nature it its place” and if you are sufficiently mature, you are more inclined to seek solutions, she added.

“I think as you grow significantly older, 60, 70, 80, 90, over 100, you can’t waste a lot of time on (thoughts of) ‘ain’t it awful?’ You really have to have an eye on being all you can be for yourself, those you love around you and the planet. Every group has some word for it… You have to try to be in the moment and give to the people around you as much love and knowledge as you have to share.”

James Hollis, Ph.D., author of Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally Really Grow Up, will hold a workshop by the same title at the C. G. Jung Center, 1567 Maple Ave., Evanston. Lecture, 7-9 p.m. Friday, March 10; Workshop 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, March 11. $110/members, $130/nonmembers. The lecture-only fee is $25. Call 847-475-4848, ext. 223 or visit cgjungcenter.org.

For more information about Elkhonon Goldberg’s work, visit www.elkhonongoldberg.com.

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