essay questions on growing old

Aging is inevitable, so why not do it joyfully? Here’s how

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This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from people in the TED community;  browse through  all the posts here .

It was recently my birthday. It wasn’t a “big” birthday — one of those round-numbered ones that feels like a milestone — but nevertheless it got me thinking about aging.

When I was a kid, growing older felt like an achievement. Each year that passed marked one step closer to adulthood, which for me meant independence and freedom. I remember going to the city with my dad to see plays or go to the Met and seeing a group of women having lunch in a café. It seemed glamorous and exciting to be an adult. I couldn’t wait.

Likewise, I never quite understood the popular antipathy toward old age. At Spencer’s, a novelty store at the Galleria Mall in White Plains where my friends and I would find gag gifts, I was always perplexed by the section of “Over the Hill” merchandise. I mean, my grandparents didn’t listen to my music or play Nintendo with me, but they were cool in their own way — not crusty and out of touch like the caricatures suggested. The geezer jokes and “lying about your age” punchlines that adorned the mugs and t-shirts there seemed to come from another world, one that didn’t make sense to me.

In my 20s and 30s, friends would casually toss around the phrase “We’re so old!” I rolled my eyes. We were so young, I felt, and why should we waste that youth focused on what was already behind us? After all, right at that moment we were the youngest we would ever be.

My 20s were miles better than my teens — more expansive, less cloistered —  and my 30s better than my 20s. I became more confident in my 30s, I got into therapy and dealt with years of childhood trauma, I learned to communicate my needs and be more mindful of the needs of others. I wouldn’t trade the growth of these past decades for fewer lines on my face or grey hairs on my head.

Author Heather Havrilesky wrote: “Growing old gracefully really means either disappearing or sticking around but always lying straight to people’s faces about the strength of your feelings and desires.”

Now that I’m in my 40s, though, aging isn’t some future concept. Just being alive means growing older, so yes, we’ve all been aging since we were born. But at a certain point, the notion of what life will be like in a couple of decades starts to feel more real, and then I start to reflect more on what my current choices mean for that future me.

I look back and wonder what my work-hard-play-hard 20s mean for me now. Could I have had a healthier body today if I had been kinder to it when I was younger? And could being gentler now give me more joy and freedom in the future?

The dominant discourse on aging, especially when it comes to women, revolves around “aging gracefully.” This generally involves looking at least three to five years younger than you actually are, while not appearing to do anything to get that way. It also means “acting your age,” by wearing age-appropriate clothes (mini skirts have an expiration date, apparently), having age-appropriate hair and doing age-appropriate activities — but maybe doing one or two surprisingly youthful things (surfing, maybe, or tap dancing) that don’t seem like you’re trying too hard yet let people know you’re still in the game.

As author Heather Havrilesky writes in her biting essay on the topic , “I think about how growing old gracefully really means either disappearing or sticking around but always lying straight to people’s faces about the strength of your feelings and desires.”

The only way to age and be deemed acceptable is to have lucky genes or to conceal your battles against time underneath a practiced smile.

“Aging gracefully” entails walking a tightrope between a youth-obsessed society, which tells us that our value declines as we age, and a culture that says nothing is as uncool as desperation, the fervent desire for something we can’t have. Marketers stoke our desire for youthfulness as the ticket to remaining relevant, then shame us when our efforts to preserve that youth go awry.

So the person who ages without thought to their appearance is written off as “having given up,” and the one whose face remains 35 forever thanks to the surgeon’s knife is considered a joke, and the only way to be deemed acceptable is to have lucky genes or to conceal your battles against time underneath a practiced smile. It all sounds exhausting, doesn’t it?

And so I’ve been thinking about how we move beyond this damaging — and frankly misogynistic — frame. What if instead of seeing aging as something to defeat and conquer, we were to embrace what gets better with age, and work to amplify these joys while mitigating the losses of youth? I’m not suggesting we paper over the very real challenges, both physical and mental, that come with aging. But can we view these challenges without judgment or shame and instead look for joyful ways to navigate them?

I delved into the research on aging, and here are 8 insights I’ve found that can help us think about joyful ways to feel well as we grow older.

1. Seek out awe 

In a study of older adults, researchers found that taking an “awe walk,” a walk specifically focused on attending to vast or inspiring things in the environment, increased joy and prosocial emotions (feelings like generosity and kindness) more than simply taking a stroll in nature. Interestingly, they also found that “smile intensity,” a measure of how much the participants smiled, increased over the eight-week duration of the study. These walks were only 15 minutes long, once a week, and are low impact, so this is an easy way to create more joy in daily life as we age.

Practiced joyspotters well know the power of attending to joyful stimuli in the environment to boost mood. This study suggests that tuning our attention specifically to things that invoke wonder and awe can have measurable benefits, especially for older adults.

2. Get a culture fix 

A 1996 study of more than 12,000 people Sweden found that attending cultural events correlated with increased survival, while people who rarely attended cultural events had a higher risk of mortality. Since then, a raft of studies (a good summary of them here ) has affirmed that people who participate in social activities such as attending church, going to the movies, playing cards or bingo, or going to restaurants or sporting events is linked with decreased mortality among older adults. One reason may be that these activities increase social connection, deepen relationships, and reinforce feelings of belonging, which are positively associated with well-being. Cultural activities also help keep the mind sharp. While the pandemic has made this one challenging, as things start to open up again, getting a culture fix can be an easy way to age joyfully.

Enriching your environment with color, art, plants and other sensorially stimulating elements may be a worthwhile investment not just for protecting your mind as you age, but also your joy.

3. Stimulate your senses

One of the most talked-about parts of my TED Talk is when I describe my experience spending a night at the wildly colorful Reversible Destiny Lofts , an apartment building designed by the artist Arakawa and the poet Madeline Gins, who believed it could reverse aging.

The idea that an apartment could reverse aging sounds farfetched, but it becomes more grounded when we look at the theory behind it. Arakawa and Gins believed that just as our muscles atrophy if we don’t exercise them, our cognitive capacity diminishes if we don’t stimulate our senses. They looked at our beige, dull interiors and imagined that these spaces would make our minds wither. And as it turns out, some early research in animals ( see also ) suggests there might be something to this. When mice are placed in “enriched environments” with lots of sensorial stimuli and opportunities for physical movement, it mitigates neurological changes associated with Alzheimer’s and dementia. While there is some evidence to suggest that this might apply to humans as well, the mechanisms behind this phenomenon are not yet well understood.

That said, we do know that the acuity of our senses declines with age. The lenses of our eyes thicken and tinge more yellow, allowing less light into the eye. Our sense of smell, taste and hearing also become less sharp. So, while you don’t have to recreate Arakawa and Gins’s quirky apartments, enriching your environment with color, art, plants and other sensorially stimulating elements may be a worthwhile investment not just for protecting your mind as you age, but also your joy.

4. Buy yourself flowers 

As if you needed an excuse for this one, but just in case, here you go. A study of older adults found that memory and mood improved when people were given a gift of flowers, which wasn’t the case when they were given another kind of gift.

Why would flowers have this effect? One reason may link to research on the attention restoration effect, which shows that the passive stimulation we find in looking at greenery helps to restore our ability to concentrate. Perhaps improved attention also results in improved memory. Another possibility, which is pure speculation at this point, relates to the evolutionary rationale for our interest in flowers. Because flowers eventually become fruit, it would have made sense for our ancestors to take an interest in them and remember their location. Monitoring the locations of flowers would allow them to save time and energy when it came to finding fruiting plants later, and potentially reach the fruit before other hungry animals. I have to stress that there’s no evidence I’m aware of to support this explanation, but it’s an intriguing possibility.

Taking it a step further, research has also shown that gardening can have mental and physical health benefits for older adults. So whether you buy your flowers or grow them, know that you’re taking a joyful step toward greater well-being in later life.

There’s something joyful about a mini time warp — maybe it’s revisiting a vacation spot you once loved or maybe it’s a getaway with friends where you banish talk of present-day concerns.

5. Try a time warp 

In 1981, Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer ran an experiment with a group of men in their 70s that has come to be known as “the counterclockwise study.” For five days, they lived inside a monastery that had been designed to look just like it was 1959. There were vintage radios and black-and-white TVs instead of cassette players and VHS. The books that lined the shelves were ones that were popular at the time. The magazines, TV shows, clothes and music were all throwbacks to that exact period.

But these men weren’t just living in a time warp. They also had to participate. They were treated like they were in their 50s, rather than their 70s. They had to carry their own bags. They discussed the news and sports of 22 years earlier in the present tense. And to preserve the illusion, there were no mirrors and no photos, except of their younger selves.

At the end of five days, the men stood taller, had greater manual dexterity, and even better vision. Independent judges said they looked younger. A touch football game broke out among the group (some of whom had previously walked with a cane) as they waited for the bus home. Langer was hesitant to publish her findings, concerned that the unusual method and small sample size might be hard for the academic community to accept. But in 2010, a BBC show recreated the experiment with aging celebrities to similar effect. Langer’s subsequent research has led her to conclude that we can prime our minds to feel younger, which in turn can make our bodies follow suit.

While it might be difficult to recreate Langer’s study in our own lives, I think there’s something joyful about a mini time warp. Maybe it’s revisiting a vacation spot you once loved, and steeping yourself in memories from an earlier time. Maybe it’s a getaway with friends where you banish all talk of present-day concerns. Maybe it’s finding a book or a stack of old magazines from back then and reading them while listening to throwback tunes.

It’s also worth noting that a control group from the counterclockwise study who simply reminisced about their youth, without using the present tense, did not experience the same dramatic results — so these “mini time warps” may be more for fun than for tangible benefit. But even if you don’t turn back the clock, checking back in with your younger self can be a way to rediscover parts of yourself that you may have lost touch with and bring them with you as you age.

6. Maximize mobility 

Exercise is often touted as a way to stay healthy and vibrant at any age , but one finding that makes it particularly relevant as we get older is that movement has been shown in studies to increase the size of the hippocampus, a part of the brain that plays a vital role in learning and memory. This is important because the hippocampus shrinks as we age, which can lead to memory deficits and increased risk of dementia. In one study of older adults, exercise increased hippocampus size by 2 percent , which is equivalent to reversing one to two years of age-related decline.

In addition to its cognitive effects, movement itself can be a source of joy. The ability to swim, hike, dance and play can be conduits to joy well into our older years. When I struggle to get motivated to exercise , I often think about my future self and how investing in my mobility now can help preserve range of motion and minimize repetitive stress injuries later. Simply put: you have one body, and it has to last your whole life. The more you do now to care for it, the more freedom you’ll have to do the things you love late in life.

As we age, we have a choice: We can either cling to the world as we shaped it and refuse to engage in the new world that kids are creating, or we can adapt to their world and remain curious, active participants.

7. Refeather your nest

Once you start looking at negative tropes around aging, you start seeing more and more of them. Take the phrase “empty nest,” which carries strong connotations of loss and deprivation. Though I’m at the stage where my nest suddenly just became quite full, I love the idea of reframing the “empty nest” into something more joyful.

One of my readers, Lee-Anne Ragan, offers up as a joyful process in the wake of children going off to start their own independent lives. She points out that the idea of an empty nest suggests that there’s nothing left, while refeathering takes a more ecological lens, imagining a kind of regeneration that happens as the home, and the family, transforms into something new. A refeathered nest is a place of possibility, creativity and delight.

8. Stay up on tech

While technology is often blamed for feelings of isolation, some studies show that for older adults, being technologically facile can offer a boost to well-being. One reason is that internet use may serve a predictor of social connection more broadly, and social connection is one of the most important contributors toward mental health and well-being throughout life, but especially in old age. Other studies suggest that when older adults lack the skills to be able to use technology effectively, it leads to a greater sense of disconnection and disempowerment  and that offering training to older adults on technology can promote cognitive function, interpersonal connection and a sense of control and independence.

I’ve often been tempted, when a radically new app or device comes out, to say “That’s for the kids,” and ignore it. With free time so scarce, exploring new tech feels less appealing than digging into one of the books piled up on my nightstand. And anyway, unplugging is supposed to be good for us, right? But technology shapes the world we live in, and those technologies that seem new and fringy in the moment often end up in the mainstream, influencing the ways we communicate, work and access even basic services.

I remember trying to teach my grandmother how to use email. She was someone who never wanted to bother anyone, and I thought that email’s asynchronous communication would be good for her. Instead of calling, she could just send a note and know that she wasn’t interrupting anyone. She tried, but she struggled to learn it. She had stopped caring about technology long before that, and the leap to figure out how to use a computer was too great. Small choices not to engage with a new technology don’t matter much in the moment, but once you get a few steps down the road to disconnection, it can feel intimidating to try to plug back in.

Staying engaged with new technologies doesn’t have to be a burden. It might simply mean saying yes when a niece or nephew invites you play Minecraft or opening a TikTok account just to check it out. You don’t have to master every new app or tool, but being comfortable with new developments can help you ensure you don’t end up feeling helpless or blindsided when the tech you rely on every day changes.

I think a lot about something psychologist Alison Gopnik said when I interviewed her for the Joy Makeover a couple of years ago. She said that each new generation breaks paradigms and overturns old ways of doing things as a matter of course. This isn’t gratuitous — it’s how we move forward as a society. Each generation of kids will remake the world, and from this we’ll gain all kinds of new discoveries. So as we age, we have a choice: we can either cling to the world as we shaped it and refuse to engage in the new world our kids’ and grandkids’ generations are creating, or we can adapt to their world and remain curious, active participants in it.

This to me is at the heart of aging joyfully. Our goal shouldn’t be to cling to youth as we get older, but to keep our joy alive by tending our inner child throughout our days while also nurturing our connection to the changing world. In doing so, we balance wisdom with wonder, confidence with curiosity and depth with delight.

This post was first published on Ingrid Fetell Lee’s site, The Aesthetics of Joy .

Watch her TED Talk now:

About the author

Ingrid Fetell Lee is the founder of the blog The Aesthetics of Joy and was formerly design director at the global innovation firm IDEO.

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Senior Lecturer in Education with Psychology, University of Bath

Research Associate, University of Bath

Disclosure statement

Sam Carr receives funding from Guild Living.

Chao Fang receives funding from Guild Living.

University of Bath provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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Paula* had not been living in her retirement apartment for very long when I arrived for our interview. She welcomed me into a modern, comfortable home. We sat in the living room, taking in the impressive view from her balcony and our conversation unfolded.

Paula, 72, told me how four years ago she’d lost her husband. She had been his carer for over ten years, as he slowly declined from a degenerative condition.

She was his nurse, driver, carer, cook and “bottle-washer”. Paula said she got used to people always asking after her husband and forgetting about her. She told me: “You are almost invisible … you kind of go in the shadows as the carer.”

While she had obviously been finding life challenging, it was also abundantly clear that she loved her husband dearly and had struggled profoundly to cope with his death. I asked Paula how long it took for her to find her bearings, and she replied:

Nearly four years. And I suddenly woke up one day and thought, you idiot, you are letting your life fade away, you have got to do something.

There were photographs of Paula’s late husband on the wall behind her. I noticed a picture of him before his illness took hold. They seemed to be at some sort of party, or wedding, holding glasses of champagne. He had his arm around her. They looked happy. There was a picture of her husband in a wheelchair too. In this picture they both looked older. But still happy.

This story is part of Conversation Insights The Insights team generates long-form journalism and is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects to tackle societal and scientific challenges.

Losing her husband had left Paula with an irreplaceable void in her life that she was still working out how to fill. In our interview, I glimpsed the extent of the deep, unavoidable sense of loneliness that losing a spouse can create for the bereaved partner – a painful theme our team would revisit many times in our interviews with older people.

The Loneliness Project

The pandemic brought the longstanding issue of loneliness and isolation in the lives of older people back into the public consciousness. When COVID-19 hit, we had only just completed the 80 in-depth interviews which formed the dataset for what we called The Loneliness Project – a large-scale, in-depth exploration of how older people experience loneliness and what it means for them.

I (Sam) am a psychologist with a particular interest in exploring human relationships across the lifespan. Chao, meanwhile, is a research associate based in the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. His research focuses on bereavement experiences and exploring emotional loneliness of people living in retirement communities. For the last two years, we’ve been working on the Loneliness Project with a small research team.

Above all, the project sought to listen to older people’s experiences. We were privileged to hear many people, like Paula, talk to us about their lives, and how growing old and ageing creates unique challenges in relation to loneliness and isolation.

The research – now published in Ageing and Society – generated over 130 hours of conversations and we started to make sense of what our participants told us with an animated film.

We found that ageing brings about a series of inevitable losses that deeply challenge people’s sense of connection to the world around them. Loneliness can often be oversimplified or reduced to how many friends a person has or how often they see their loved ones.

But a particular focus for us was to better understand what underpins feelings of loneliness in older people on a deeper level. Researchers have used the term “existential loneliness” to describe this deeper sense of feeling “separated from the world” – as though there is an insurmountable gap between oneself and the rest of society. Our objective was to listen carefully to how people experienced and responded to this.

The older people in our study helped us to better understand how they felt growing old had affected their sense of connecting to the world – and there were some core themes.

For many, ageing brought about an inevitable accumulation of losses. Put simply, some of the people we spoke to had lost things that had previously been a major part of feeling connected to something bigger than themselves.

Loss of a spouse or long-term partner (over half of our sample had lost their long-term spouse) was particularly palpable and underlined the deep-rooted sense of loneliness associated with losing someone irreplaceable. Reflecting on the loss of her husband, Paula said:

When he was gone, I didn’t know where I fitted anymore. I didn’t know who I was anymore because I wasn’t [upset] … You just existed. Went shopping, when you needed food. I didn’t want to see people. I didn’t go anywhere.

There was evidence of how painful this irreplaceable void was for people. Douglas, 86, lost his wife five years before speaking to us. He tried his best to articulate the sense of hopelessness, despair – and sheer loss of meaning – it had created for him. He said it hadn’t stopped being difficult, despite the passing of time, adding: “They say it gets better. It never gets better.”

Douglas explained how he never stops thinking about his wife. “It’s hard for people to understand a lot of the time,” he said.

People also talked about how learning to live in the world again felt alien, terrifying and, frequently, impossible. For Amy, 76, relearning how to do the “little things in life” was a lonely and challenging experience.

It took me a long time … just to go down for breakfast on my own … I’d have to bring a paper or a book to sit with. And never ever, I would never, ever go and have a cup of coffee on my own in a coffee shop. So, I literally ‘learnt’ to do that. And that was a biggy, just going to a coffee shop and having a coffee.

Amy said going into busy places on her own was hard because she thought everyone was looking at her. “I would always do it with Tony, my husband, whatever … But to do it on your own, a biggy. It’s stupid, I know, but anyway, hey ho.”

For Peter, 83, the loss of his wife had created a painful void around feelings of touch and physical intimacy that had always made him feel less alone.

I suppose all my life sex has been lovemaking. I mean, we are really getting personal now, but when my wife died, I missed that so, so much. It’s much more enjoyable in old age, you know, because, I mean, if I said it to you you’d think oh good grief, that horrible old body and all the spots and bumps and cuts and wounds and … takes off a wooden leg and … takes out the eye. Sorry [laughs] … But it’s not anything like that because you know you are in the same boat … you get round it, some peculiar way, you accept it all.

Another man, Philip, 73, also described the pain in this loss of intimacy. He said:

At my wife’s funeral, I said the one thing I will miss most is a kiss goodnight. And blow me, afterwards, one of our friends came round, and she said, ‘well, we can send each other kisses if you like but by text every night’, and would you believe, we still are, we still do.

With the very old people we talked with, there was a sense that loss of close and meaningful connections was cumulative. Alice, 93, had lost her first husband, her subsequent partner, her siblings, her friends and, most recently, her only son. With a sense of sadness and weariness, she explained:

You know, underneath it all I wouldn’t mind leaving this world. Everyone has died and I think I’m lonely.

Researchers at Malmö University, Sweden, have described an acute sense of existential loneliness in very old age, that is partly a reflection of an accumulated loss of close connections.

The study found that the result can be understood as if the older person “is in a process of letting go of life. This process involves the body, in that the older person is increasingly limited in his or her physical abilities. The older person’s long term relationships are gradually lost and finally the process results in the older person increasingly withdrawing into him or herself and turning off the outside world”.

‘A stiff upper lip’

Studies of loneliness have highlighted how an inability to communicate can bring about a feeling that “the soul is incarcerated in an insufferable prison”.

This was reflected in our study too. Many of our participants said they had trouble communicating because they simply didn’t have the tools required to convey such complicated emotions and deeper feelings. This led us to contemplate why some older people might not have developed such essential emotional tools.

Research has suggested that older people born in the first half of the 20th century were unwittingly indoctrinated into the concept of the “stiff upper lip”. Through most of their lives – including wartime, peacetime employment, conscription to military service, and family life – there was a requirement to maintain high levels of cognitive control and low levels of emotional expression.

Some of our participants seemed to be implicitly aware of this phenomenon and how it had shaped their generation. Polly, 73, explained it succinctly for us:

If you don’t think about it, if you don’t give it words, then you don’t have to feel the pain … How long is it since men cried in public? Never cry. Big boys don’t cry. That is certainly what was said when I was growing up. Different generation.

People said that wartime childhoods had “hardened them”, led to them suppressing deeper feelings and feeling the need to maintain a sense of composure and control.

For example, Margaret, 86, was a “latchkey child” during the war. Her parents went out at 7am and she had to get up and make her own breakfast at the age of nine. She then had to catch a tram and a bus to get to school and when she got back at night her parents would still be out, working late.

So I used to light the fire, get the dinner ready. But when you are a child, you don’t think about it, you just do it. I mean, no way did I count myself as a neglected child, it was just the way it was in the war, you just had to do it …“

Margaret said it was "just an attitude”. She went to 11 schools, travelled around the country because of the war and had nothing really to do with other people. She added: “I think it makes you a little bit hard … I think sometimes I am a hard person because of it.”

As interviewers who have grown up in a culture that is perhaps more permissive of emotional expression than had been the case for many of the people we interviewed, it was sometimes difficult for us to witness how deep-rooted people’s inability to express their suffering could be.

Douglas was clearly struggling deeply after the death of his wife. But he lacked the tools and relationships to help him work through it. He said he had nobody who was close to him who he could confide in. “People never confided in my family. It was different growing up then,” he added.

Heavy burdens

The burden of loneliness for older people is intimately connected to what they are alone with. As we reach the end of our lives, we frequently carry heavy burdens that have accumulated along the way, such as feelings of regret, betrayal and rejection. And the wounds from past relationships can haunt people all their lives.

Gerontologist professor, Malcolm Johnson, has used the term “ biographical pain ” to describe psychological and spiritual suffering in the old and frail that involves profoundly painful recollection and reliving of experienced wrongs, self-promises and regretted actions.

He has written that: “Living to be old is still considered to be a great benefit. But dying slowly and painfully, with too much time to reflect and with little or no prospect of redressing harms, deficits, deceits, and emotional pain, has few redeeming features.”

Many of those we spoke to told us how hard it was to be left alone with unresolved pain. For example Georgina, 83, said she learned in early childhood that she was “a bad person … stupid, ugly”. She remembered her brother, as an older man, dying in hospital, “connected to all these machines”. However, she could neither forgive nor forget the abuse he had inflicted upon her during childhood. “My faith told me to forgive him but, ultimately, he scratched me in my soul as a kid,” she added.

People carried memories and wounds from the past that they wanted to talk about, to make sense of and to share. Susan, 83, and Bob, 76, talked about painful and difficult memories from their early family lives.

Susan spoke about how she had a nervous breakdown when her family “disowned” her after she fell pregnant at the age of 17. She said:

I come from this secret family. We all had to present as expected. If you didn’t, you were out, and that was the bottom line. I look back on my life and I wonder that I survived.

While Bob remembered a life of violence at the hands of his father. “I copped so many hidings from him. Then one night … my old man had a bad habit. He would get up and walk past you and smack you in the ribs. I sensed it coming, I was out of my chair in a flash, I caught him, crossed his hands over his wrists, and jammed my knuckle into his Adam’s Apple. That was family life,” he said.

Janet, 75, explained to us that she felt what was lacking from her life was a space where she could talk about, make sense of, and reflect on the biographical pain she had accumulated.

This is what I miss a lot, a private space to talk … All my life I’ve suffered … and some things I do find very hard … With everything that’s gone wrong, I would like to talk to somebody, no advice, I want to let off steam, make sense of it all, I suppose. But it doesn’t happen.

Your life mattered

Thinking about how older people can be supported must involve a fuller understanding of what loneliness really means for them. Some of our own efforts have focused on ways of helping older people retain a sense that they are valued in the world and that they matter.

For example, the Extraordinary Lives Project sought to listen to older people’s recollections, wisdom and reflections. Sharing these recollections with others, including younger generations, has been mutually beneficial and helped older people to feel that the lives they have lived counted for something.

There is also a need to consider how to support older people in relation to coping with some of the inevitable losses ageing creates that threaten their sense of connection to the world. Organisations seeking to connect people going through these struggles can play a role in developing a sense of “coping together”.

Such organisations already exist in relation to support for widows , provision of spaces like death cafes to talk about death and dying and improving access to and awareness of psychological and emotional therapies for older people.

So support is out there but it is often fragmented and difficult to find. A core challenge for the future is to create living environments in which these mechanisms of support are embedded and integrated into older people’s communities.

Listening to all these experiences helped us to appreciate that loneliness in later life runs deep – much deeper than we might think. We learned that growing old and approaching the end of life create unique sets of circumstances such as loss, physical deterioration and biographical pain and regret that can give rise to a unique sense of disconnection from the world.

Yet people can and did find their way through the significant challenges and disruptions that ageing had posed them. Before I (Sam) left her apartment, Paula made me a cup of tea and a ham sandwich and told me:

It’s funny, you know, I had a building which I had inherited, and I had some money in the bank but who was I, what was I anymore? That was my main challenge. But now, four years later, I’ve moved to a retirement village and I’m noticing there’s just a little thrill associated with being able to do exactly as I please – and if people say, ‘Oh but you should do this,’ I go, ‘No, I shouldn’t!’

*All names in this article have been changed to protect the anonymity of those involved.

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Growing Old in America: Expectations vs. Reality

Overview and executive summary.

On aspects of everyday life ranging from mental acuity to physical dexterity to sexual activity to financial security, a new Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends survey on aging among a nationally representative sample of 2,969 adults finds a sizable gap between the expectations that young and middle-aged adults have about old age and the actual experiences reported by older Americans themselves.

These disparities come into sharpest focus when survey respondents are asked about a series of negative benchmarks often associated with aging, such as illness, memory loss, an inability to drive, an end to sexual activity, a struggle with loneliness and depression, and difficulty paying bills. In every instance, older adults report experiencing them at lower levels (often far lower) than younger adults report expecting to encounter them when they grow old. 1

At the same time, however, older adults report experiencing fewer of the benefits of aging that younger adults expect to enjoy when they grow old, such as spending more time with their family, traveling more for pleasure, having more time for hobbies, doing volunteer work or starting a second career.

Other potential markers of old age–such as forgetfulness, retirement, becoming sexually inactive, experiencing bladder control problems, getting gray hair, having grandchildren–are the subjects of similar perceptual gaps. For example, nearly two-thirds of adults ages 18 to 29 believe that when someone “frequently forgets familiar names,” that person is old. Less than half of all adults ages 30 and older agree.

However, a handful of potential markers–failing health, an inability to live independently, an inability to drive, difficulty with stairs–engender agreement across all generations about the degree to which they serve as an indicator of old age.

Grow Older, Feel Younger

The survey findings would seem to confirm the old saw that you’re never too old to feel young. In fact, it shows that the older people get, the younger they feel –relatively speaking. Among 18 to 29 year-olds, about half say they feel their age, while about quarter say they feel older than their age and another quarter say they feel younger. By contrast, among adults 65 and older, fully 60% say they feel younger than their age, compared with 32% who say they feel exactly their age and just 3% who say they feel older than their age.

Moreover, the gap in years between actual age and “felt age” widens as people grow older. Nearly half of all survey respondents ages 50 and older say they feel at least 10 years younger than their chronological age. Among respondents ages 65 to 74, a third say they feel 10 to 19 years younger than their age, and one-in-six say they feel at least 20 years younger than their actual age.

The Downside of Getting Old

To be sure, there are burdens that come with old age. About one-in-four adults ages 65 and older report experiencing memory loss. About one-in-five say they have a serious illness, are not sexually active, or often feel sad or depressed. About one-in-six report they are lonely or have trouble paying bills. One-in-seven cannot drive. One-in-ten say they feel they aren’t needed or are a burden to others.

But when it comes to these and other potential problems related to old age, the share of younger and middle-aged adults who report expecting to encounter them is much higher than the share of older adults who report actually experiencing them.

Not surprisingly, troubles associated with aging accelerate as adults advance into their 80s and beyond. For example, about four-in-ten respondents (41%) ages 85 and older say they are experiencing some memory loss, compared with 27% of those ages 75-84 and 20% of those ages 65-74. Similarly, 30% of those ages 85 and older say they often feel sad or depressed, compared with less than 20% of those who are 65-84. And a quarter of adults ages 85 and older say they no longer drive, compared with 17% of those ages 75-84 and 10% of those who are 65-74.

But even in the face of these challenges, the vast majority of the “old old” in our survey appear to have made peace with their circumstances. Only a miniscule share of adults ages 85 and older–1%–say their lives have turned out worse than they expected. It no doubt helps that adults in their late 80s are as likely as those in their 60s and 70s to say that they are experiencing many of the good things associated with aging–be it time with family, less stress, more respect or more financial security.

The Upside of Getting Old

Of all the good things about getting old, the best by far, according to older adults, is being able to spend more time with family members. In response to an open-ended question, 28% of those ages 65 and older say that what they value most about being older is the chance to spend more time with family, and an additional 25% say that above all, they value time with their grandchildren. A distant third on this list is having more financial security, which was cited by 14% of older adults as what they value most about getting older.

People Are Living Longer

These survey findings come at a time when older adults account for record shares of the populations of the United States and most developed countries. Some 39 million Americans, or 13% of the U.S. population, are 65 and older–up from 4% in 1900. The century-long expansion in the share of the world’s population that is 65 and older is the product of dramatic advances in medical science and public health as well as steep declines in fertility rates. In this country, the increase has leveled off since 1990, but it will start rising again when the first wave of the nation’s 76 million baby boomers turn 65 in 2011. By 2050, according to Pew Research projections, about one-in-five Americans will be over age 65, and about 5% will be ages 85 and older, up from 2% now. These ratios will put the U.S. at mid-century roughly where Japan, Italy and Germany–the three “oldest” large countries in the world–are today.

Contacting Older Adults

Any survey that focuses on older adults confronts one obvious methodological challenge: A small but not insignificant share of people 65 and older are either too ill or incapacitated to take part in a 20-minute telephone survey, or they live in an institutional setting such as a nursing home where they cannot be contacted. 2

We assume that the older adults we were unable to reach for these reasons have a lower quality of life, on average, than those we did reach. To mitigate this problem, the survey included interviews with more than 800 adults whose parents are ages 65 or older. We asked these adult children many of the same questions about their parents’ lives that we asked of older adults about their own lives. These “surrogate” respondents provide a window on the experiences of the full population of older adults, including those we could not reach directly. Not surprisingly, the portrait of old age they draw is somewhat more negative than the one painted by older adult respondents themselves. We present a summary of these second-hand observations at the end of Section I in the belief that the two perspectives complement one another and add texture to our report.

Perceptions about Aging

When Does Old Age Begin? At 68. That’s the average of all answers from the 2,969 survey respondents. But as noted above, this average masks a wide, age-driven variance in responses. More than half of adults under 30 say the average person becomes old even before turning 60. Just 6% of adults who are 65 or older agree. Moreover, gender as well as age influences attitudes on this subject. Women, on average, say a person becomes old at age 70. Men, on average, put the number at 66. In addition, on all 10 of the non-chronological potential markers of old age tested in this survey, men are more inclined than women to say the marker is a proxy for old age.

Are You Old? Certainly not! Public opinion in the aggregate may decree that the average person becomes old at age 68, but you won’t get too far trying to convince people that age that the threshold applies to them. Among respondents ages 65-74, just 21% say they feel old. Even among those who are 75 and older, just 35% say they feel old.

Everyday Life

What Do Older People Do Every Day? Among all adults ages 65 and older, nine-in-ten talk with family or friends every day. About eight-in-ten read a book, newspaper or magazine, and the same share takes a prescription drug daily. Three-quarters watch more than a hour of television; about the same share prays daily. Nearly two-thirds drive a car. Less than half spend time on a hobby. About four-in-ten take a nap; about the same share goes shopping. Roughly one-in-four use the internet, get vigorous exercise or have trouble sleeping. Just 4% get into an argument with someone. As adults move deeper into their 70s and 80s, daily activity levels diminish on most fronts–especially when it comes to exercising and driving. On the other hand, daily prayer and daily medication both increase with age.

Retirement and Old Age. Retirement is a place without clear borders. Fully 83% of adults ages 65 and older describe themselves as retired, but the word means different things to different people. Just three-quarters of adults (76%) 65 and older fit the classic stereotype of the retiree who has completely left the working world behind.

Living Arrangements. More than nine-in-ten respondents ages 65 and older live in thei r own home or apartment, and the vast majority are either very satisfied (67%) or somewhat satisfied (21%) with their living arrangements. However, many living patterns change as adults advance into older age. For example, just 30% of adults ages 65-74 say they live alone, compared with 66% of adults ages 85 and above. Also, just 2% of adults ages 65-74 and 4% of adults ages 75-84 say they live in an assisted living facility, compared with 15% of those ages 85 and above.

The Twitter Revolution Hasn’t Landed Here. If there’s one realm of modern life where old and young behave very differently, it’s in the adoption of newfangled information technologies. Just four-in-ten adults ages 65-74 use the internet on a daily basis, and that share drops to just one-in-six among adults 75 and above. By contrast, three-quarters of adults ages 18-30 go online daily. The generation gap is even wider when it comes to cell phones and text messages. Among adults 65 and older, just 5% get most or all of their calls on a cell phone, and just 11% sometimes use their cell phone to send or receive a text message. For adults under age 30, the comparable figures are 72% and 87%, respectively.

Family Relationships

Staying in Touch with the Kids. Nearly nine-in-ten adults (87%) ages 65 and older have children. Of this group, just over half are in contact with a son or daughter every day, and an additional 40% are in contact with at least one child–either in person, by phone or by email–at least once a week. Mothers and daughters are in the most frequent contact; fathers and daughters the least. Sons fall in the middle, and they keep in touch with older mothers and fathers at equal rates. Overall, three-quarters of adults who have a parent or parents ages 65 and older say they are very satisfied with their relationship with their parent(s), but that share falls to 62% if a parent needs help caring for his or her needs.

Was the Great Bard Mistaken? Shakespeare wrote that the last of the “seven ages of man” is a second childhood. Through the centuries, other poets and philosophers have observed that parents and children often reverse roles as parents grow older. Not so, says the Pew Research survey. Just 12% of parents ages 65 and older say they generally rely on their children more than their children rely on them. An additional 14% say their children rely more on them. The majority–58%–says neither relies on the other, and 13% say they rely on one another equally. Responses to this question from children of older parents are broadly similar.

About the Survey

Results for this report are from a telephone survey conducted with a nationally representative sample of 2,969 adults living in the continental United States. A combination of landline and cellular random digit dial (RDD) samples were used to cover all adults in the continental United States who have access to either a landline or cellular telephone. In addition, oversamples of adults 65 and older as well as blacks and Hispa nics were obtained. The black and Hispanic oversamples were achieved by oversampling landline exchanges with more black and Hispanic residents as well as callbacks to blacks and Hispanics interviewed in previous surveys. A total of 2,417 interviews were completed with respondents contacted by landline telephone and 552 with those contacted on their cellular phone. The data are weighted to produce a final sample that is representative of the general population of adults in the continental United States. Survey interviews were conducted under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates (PSRA).

• Interviews were conducted Feb. 23-March 23, 2009.
• There were 2,969 interviews, including 1,332 with respondents 65 or older. The older respondents included 799 whites, 293 blacks and 161 Hispanics.
• Margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points for results based on the total sample and 3.7 percentage points for adults who are 65 and older at the 95% confidence level
• For data reported by race or ethnicity, the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points for the sample of older whites, plus or minus 7.4 percentage points for older blacks and plus or minus 10.3 percentage points for older Hispanics.
• Note on terminology: Whites include only non-Hispanic whites. Blacks include only non-Hispanic blacks. Hispanics are of any race.

About the Focus Groups

With the assistance of PSRA, the Pew Research Center conducted four focus groups earlier this year in Baltimore, Md. Two groups were made up of adults ages 65 and older; two others were made up of adults with parents ages 65 and older. Our purpose was to listen to ordinary Americans talk about the challenges and pleasures of growing old, and the stories we heard during those focus groups helped us shape our survey questionnaire. Focus group participants were told that they might be quoted in this report, but we promised not to quote them by name. The quotations interspersed throughout these pages are drawn from these focus group conversations.

About the Report

This report was edited and the overview written by Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the Pew Research Center and director of its Social & Demographic Trends project . Sections I, II and III were written by Senior Researcher Kim Parker. Section IV was written by Research Associate Wendy Wang and Taylor. Section V was written by Senior Editor Richard Morin. The Demographics Section was written by Senior Writer D’Vera Cohn and the data was compiled by Wang. Led by Ms. Parker, the full Social & Demographic Trends staff wrote the survey questionnaire and conducted the analysis of its findings. The regression analysis we used to examine the predictors of happiness among older and younger adults was done by a consultant, Cary L. Funk, associate professor in the Wilder School of Government at Virginia Commonwealth University. The report was copy-edited by Marcia Kramer of Kramer Editing Services. It was number checked by Pew Research Center staff members Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, Daniel Dockterman and Cristina Mercado. We wish to thank other PRC colleagues who offered research and editorial guidance, including Andrew Kohut, Scott Keeter, Gretchen Livingston, Jeffrey Passel, Rakesh Kochhar and Richard Fry.

Read the full report for more details.

• See Page 6 for a discussion of the challenges of reaching a representative sample of older adults with a telephone survey. ↩
• According to U.S. Census Bureau figures, about 5% of all adults ages 65 and older are in a nursing home. For adults ages 85 and older, this figure rises to about 17%. ↩
• Changes in Social Security legislation, along with the transition from defined-benefit to defined-contribution pension plans, have in recent years increased incentives to work at older ages. For more detail, see Abraham Mosisa and Steven Hipple, “Trends in Labor Force Participation in the United States,” Monthly Labor Review (October 2006): 35-57. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force participation rate of adults 65 and over (that is, the share of this population that is either employed or actively looking for work) rose to 16.8% in 2008 from 12.9% in 2000. ↩

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How to Grow Old: Bertrand Russell on What Makes a Fulfilling Life

By maria popova.

“If you can fall in love again and again,” Henry Miller wrote as he contemplated the measure of a life well lived on the precipice of turning eighty, “if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical… you’ve got it half licked.”

Seven years earlier, the great British philosopher, mathematician, historian, and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970) considered the same abiding question at the same life-stage in a wonderful short essay titled “How to Grow Old,” penned in his eighty-first year and later published in Portraits from Memory and Other Essays ( public library ).

Russell places at the heart of a fulfilling life the dissolution of the personal ego into something larger. Drawing on the longstanding allure of rivers as existential metaphors , he writes:

Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.

In a sentiment which philosopher and comedian Emily Levine would echo in her stirring reflection on facing her own death with equanimity , Russell builds on the legacy of Darwin and Freud, who jointly established death as an organizing principle of modern life , and concludes:

The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.

Portraits from Memory and Other Essays is an uncommonly potent packet of wisdom in its totality. Complement this particular fragment with Nobel laureate André Gide on how happiness increases with age , Ursula K. Le Guin on aging and what beauty really means , and Grace Paley on the art of growing older — the loveliest thing I’ve ever read on the subject — then revisit Russell on critical thinking , power-knowledge vs. love-knowledge , what “the good life” really means , why “fruitful monotony” is essential for happiness , and his remarkable response to a fascist’s provocation .

— Published July 3, 2018 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/07/03/how-to-grow-old-bertrand-russell/ —

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Reason and Meaning

Philosophical reflections on life, death, and the meaning of life, bertrand russell: “how to grow old”.

Perhaps no one has written more eloquently about growing old than the great philosopher Bertrand Russell in his essay “ How To Grow Old .”

The best way to overcome it [the fear of death]—so at least it seems to me—is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.

This is one of the most beautiful reflections on death I have found in all of world literature.

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12 thoughts on “ bertrand russell: “how to grow old” ”.

Not only is this a beautiful reflection on death, but one about life as well. The imagery evoked by the way that Russell describes an individual human existence as “like a river” is profound. There is no need for any invented religious or metaphysical jargon. Wonderful post!

Thanks Jim. I have taken much comfort from Russell’s inisghts on this and have quoted them many times thru the years.

Russell is an enlightened soul at peace with himself and the world which can be said of only a handful persons and only such a profound soul can have the wisdom reflected so lyrically in the passage

Thanks for your comments Jag. JGM

“I wish to propose…..a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe in a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it true.”

–Russell

thanks and I agree wholeheartedly. JGM

I’m now in my mid-20s. I remember my days in college, this website was my source of relief, when I was anxious, when I needed answers; reading here was my therapy. I have overcome my parents’ religion, though I had a breakdown. This time, a pandemic makes me hopeless and unemployment makes it worse. I am here again. Be my guide, my source of wisdom. Thank you all the way from the PH. #JunkTerrorBill #OustDuterte

I so appreciate your kind words, I hope they help. I wish you the very best. JGM

You don’t find something like this very often at all. Wish I’d discovered it when I was in my twenties!

thanks for the comments. JGM

I wish that when we share articles on Facebook, the picture of Russell would show up instead of a giant R M

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Philosopher Bertrand Russell’s Indispensable Advice on ‘How (Not) to Grow Old’

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Bertrand Russell is one of modern philosophy's most prolific minds. Born in Victorian England, Russell rejected British idealism in favor of logic—an approach that has significantly shaped contemporary perceptions of mathematics, language, and even aging. In his essay, “ How to Grow Old ,” Russell uses his logical thinking to lay out his advice for achieving “a successful old age.”

Penned for his book,  Portraits From Memory And Other Essays , “How to Grow Old” outlines the lessons Russell had learned by his 81st year. “In spite of the title,” the prose begins, “this article will really be on how not to grow old, which, at my time of life, is a much more important subject.” Though relatively short, the piece is packed full of insight, featuring commentary that begins comically (“My first advice would be to choose your ancestors carefully”) and concludes existentially (“But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows . . . the fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble.”) Of course, Russell is a philosopher, so this is to be expected—as are his musings on health.

While the philosopher stresses the significance of keeping psychologically fit, he considers strict diets, sleeping schedules, and other physical regimes a little bit less important. “I eat and drink whatever I like, and sleep when I cannot keep awake,” he says. “I never do anything whatever on the ground that it is good for health, though in actual fact the things I like doing are mostly wholesome.”

Toward the end of the essay, Russell reveals his top tip for getting older: broaden your horizons. Specifically, he notes that one's interests should expand with age, as this will keep you less concerned with ego and more in tune with the universe as a whole. “An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.”

Profoundly poignant, “How to Grow Old” is an indispensable read for those who want to live a long and logical life.

Read the full text of Bertrand Russell's inspiring essay, “How to Grow Old.”

In spite of the title, this article will really be on how not to grow old, which, at my time of life, is a much more important subject. My first advice would be to choose your ancestors carefully. Although both my parents died young, I have done well in this respect as regards my other ancestors. My maternal grandfather, it is true, was cut off in the flower of his youth at the age of sixty-seven, but my other three grandparents all lived to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off. A great-grandmother of mine, who was a friend of Gibbon, lived to the age of ninety-two, and to her last day remained a terror to all her descendants. My maternal grandmother, after having nine children who survived, one who died in infancy, and many miscarriages, as soon as she became a widow devoted herself to women’s higher education. She was one of the founders of Girton College, and worked hard at opening the medical profession to women. She used to tell of how she met in Italy an elderly gentleman who was looking very sad. She asked him why he was so melancholy and he said that he had just parted from his two grandchildren. ‘Good gracious,’ she exclaimed, ‘I have seventy-two grandchildren, and if I were sad each time I parted from one of them, I should have a miserable existence!’ ‘Madre snaturale!,’ he replied. But speaking as one of the seventy-two, I prefer her recipe. After the age of eighty she found she had some difficulty in getting to sleep, so she habitually spent the hours from midnight to 3 a.m. in reading popular science. I do not believe that she ever had time to notice that she was growing old. This, I think, is the proper recipe for remaining young. If you have wide and keen interests and activities in which you can still be effective, you will have no reason to think about the merely statistical fact of the number of years you have already lived, still less of the probable shortness of your future.

As regards health, I have nothing useful to say as I have little experience of illness. I eat and drink whatever I like, and sleep when I cannot keep awake. I never do anything whatever on the ground that it is good for health, though in actual fact the things I like doing are mostly wholesome.

Psychologically there are two dangers to be guarded against in old age. One of these is undue absorption in the past. It does not do to live in memories, in regrets for the good old days, or in sadness about friends who are dead. One’s thoughts must be directed to the future, and to things about which there is something to be done. This is not always easy; one’s own past is a gradually increasing weight. It is easy to think to oneself that one’s emotions used to be more vivid than they are, and one’s mind more keen. If this is true it should be forgotten, and if it is forgotten it will probably not be true.

The other thing to be avoided is clinging to youth in the hope of sucking vigour from its vitality. When your children are grown up they want to live their own lives, and if you continue to be as interested in them as you were when they were young, you are likely to become a burden to them, unless they are unusually callous. I do not mean that one should be without interest in them, but one’s interest should be contemplative and, if possible, philanthropic, but not unduly emotional. Animals become indifferent to their young as soon as their young can look after themselves, but human beings, owing to the length of infancy, find this difficult.

I think that a successful old age is easiest for those who have strong impersonal interests involving appropriate activities. It is in this sphere that long experience is really fruitful, and it is in this sphere that the wisdom born of experience can be exercised without being oppressive. It is no use telling grownup children not to make mistakes, both because they will not believe you, and because mistakes are an essential part of education. But if you are one of those who are incapable of impersonal interests, you may find that your life will be empty unless you concern yourself with your children and grandchildren. In that case you must realise that while you can still render them material services, such as making them an allowance or knitting them jumpers, you must not expect that they will enjoy your company.

Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. In the young there there is a justification for this feeling. Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in the thought that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer. But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble. The best way to overcome it -so at least it seems to me- is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.

h/t: [ Open Culture ]

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Why We Can’t Tell the Truth About Aging

In days of old, when most people didn’t live to be old, there were very few notable works about old age, and those were penned by writers who were themselves not very old. Chaucer was around fifty when “ The Merchant’s Tale ” was conceived; Shakespeare either forty-one or forty-two when he wrote “ King Lear ,” Swift fifty-five or so when gleefully depicting the immortal but ailing Struldbruggs, and Tennyson a mere twenty-four when he began “Tithonus” and completed “Ulysses,” his great anthem to an aging but “hungry heart.”

One might think that forty was not so young in Shakespeare’s day, but if you survived birth, infections, wars, and pestilence you stood a decent chance of reaching an advanced age no matter when you were born. Average life expectancy was indeed a sorry number for the greater part of history (for Americans born as late as 1900, it wasn’t even fifty), which may be one reason that people didn’t write books about aging: there weren’t enough old folks around to sample them. But now that more people on the planet are over sixty-five than under five, an army of readers stands waiting to learn what old age has in store.

Reading through a recent spate of books that deal with aging, one might forget that, half a century ago, the elderly were, as V. S. Pritchett noted in his 1964 introduction to Muriel Spark’s novel “ Memento Mori ,” “the great suppressed and censored subject of contemporary society, the one we do not care to face.” Not only are we facing it today; we’re also putting the best face on it that we possibly can. Our senior years are evidently a time to celebrate ourselves and the wonderful things to come: travelling, volunteering, canoodling, acquiring new skills, and so on. No one, it seems, wants to disparage old age. Nora Ephron’s “ I Feel Bad About My Neck ” tries, but is too wittily mournful to have real angst. Instead, we get such cheerful tidings as Mary Pipher’s “ Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing as We Age ,” Marc E. Agronin’s “ The End of Old Age: Living a Longer, More Purposeful Life ,” Alan D. Castel’s “ Better with Age: The Psychology of Successful Aging ,” Ashton Applewhite’s “ This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism ,” and Carl Honoré’s “ Bolder: Making the Most of Our Longer Lives ”—five chatty accounts meant to reassure us that getting old just means that we have to work harder at staying young.

Pipher is a clinical psychologist who is attentive to women over sixty, whose minds and bodies, she asserts, are steadily being devalued. She is sometimes tiresomely trite, urging women to “conceptualize all experiences in positive ways,” but invariably sympathetic. Agronin, described perhaps confusingly as “a geriatric psychiatrist” (he’s in his mid-fifties), believes that aging not only “brings strength” but is also “the most profound thing we accomplish in life.” Castel, a professor of psychology at U.C.L.A., believes in “successful aging” and seeks to show us how it can be achieved. And Applewhite, who calls herself an “author and activist,” doesn’t just inveigh against stereotypes; she wants to nuke them, replacing terms like “seniors” and “the elderly” with “olders.” Olders, she believes, can get down with the best of them. Retirement homes “are hotbeds of lust and romance,” she writes. “Sex and arousal do change, but often for the better.” Could be, though I’ve never heard anyone testify to this. Perhaps the epicurean philosopher Rodney Dangerfield (who died a month short of his eighty-third birthday), having studied the relationship between sexuality and longevity, said it best: “I’m at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life. In fact, I’ve just had a mirror put over my kitchen table.”

Applewhite makes an appearance in Honoré’s book. She tells Honoré, a Canadian journalist who is now fifty-one, that aging is “like falling in love or motherhood.” Honoré reminds us that “history is full of folks smashing it in later life.” Smashers include Sophocles, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Bach, and Edison, who filed patents into his eighties. Perhaps because Honoré isn’t an American, he omits Satchel Paige, who pitched in the majors until he was fifty-nine. Like Applewhite, who claims that the older brain works “in a more synchronized way,” Honoré contends that aging may “alter the structure of the brain in ways that boost creativity.”

These authors aren’t blind to the perils of aging; they just prefer to see the upside. All maintain that seniors are more comfortable in their own skins, experiencing, Applewhite says, “less social anxiety, and fewer social phobias.” There’s some evidence for this. The connection between happiness and aging—following the success of books like Jonathan Rauch’s “ The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50 ” and John Leland’s “ Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old ,” both published last year—has very nearly come to be accepted as fact. According to a 2011 Gallup survey, happiness follows the U-shaped curve first proposed in a 2008 study by the economists David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald. They found that people’s sense of well-being was highest in childhood and old age, with a perceptible dip around midlife.

Lately, however, the curve has invited skepticism. Apparently, its trajectory holds true mainly in countries where the median wage is high and people tend to live longer or, alternatively, where the poor feel resentment more keenly during middle age and don’t mind saying so. But there may be a simpler explanation: perhaps the people who participate in such surveys are those whose lives tend to follow the curve, while people who feel miserable at seventy or eighty, whose ennui is offset only by brooding over unrealized expectations, don’t even bother to open such questionnaires.

One strategy of these books is to emphasize that aging is natural and therefore good, an idea that harks back to Plato, who lived to be around eighty and thought philosophy best suited to men of more mature years (women, no matter their age, could not think metaphysically). His most famous student, Aristotle, had a different opinion; his “ Ars Rhetorica ” contains long passages denouncing old men as miserly, cowardly, cynical, loquacious, and temperamentally chilly. (Aristotle thought that the body lost heat as it aged.) These gruff views were formed during the first part of Aristotle’s life, and we don’t know if they changed before he died, at the age of sixty-two. The nature-is-always-right argument found its most eloquent spokesperson in the Roman statesman Cicero, who was sixty-two when he wrote “De Senectute,” liberally translated as “ How to Grow Old ,” a valiant performance that both John Adams (dead at ninety) and Benjamin Franklin (dead at eighty-four) thought highly of.

Montaigne took a more measured view. Writing around 1580, he considered the end of a long life to be “rare, extraordinary, and singular . . . ’tis the last and extremest sort of dying: and the more remote, the less to be hoped for.” Montaigne, who never reached sixty, might have changed his mind upon learning that, in the twenty-first century, people routinely live into their seventies and eighties. But I suspect that he’d still say, “Whoever saw old age, that did not applaud the past, and condemn the present times?” No happiness curve for him.

There is, of course, a chance that you may be happier at eighty than you were at twenty or forty, but you’re going to feel much worse. I know this because two recent books provide a sobering look at what happens to the human body as the years pile up. Elizabeth Blackburn and Elissa Epel’s “ The Telomere Effect: Living Younger, Healthier, Longer ” and Sue Armstrong’s “ Borrowed Time: The Science of How and Why We Age ” describe what is essentially a messy business. Armstrong, a British science and health writer, presents, in crack Michael Lewis style, the high points of aging research along with capsule biographies of the main players, while Blackburn, one of three recipients of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology, focusses on the shortening of telomeres, those tiny aglets of DNA attached to our chromosomes, whose length is a measure of cellular health. Basically, most cells divide and replicate some fifty-plus times before becoming senescent. Not nearly as inactive as the name suggests, senescent cells contribute to chronic inflammation and interfere with protective collagens. Meanwhile, telomeres shorten with each cell division, even as life style affects the degree of shrinkage—data now suggest that “married people, or people living with a partner, have longer telomeres.”

Walt Whitman, who never married, made it to seventy-two, and offered a lyric case for aging. “ YOUTH , large, lusty, loving—youth full of grace, force, fascination,” he intoned. “Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?” It’s pretty to think so, but the biology suggests otherwise. The so-called epigenetic clock shows our DNA getting gummed up, age-related mitochondrial mutations reducing the cells’ ability to generate energy, and our immune system slowly growing less efficient. Bones weaken, eyes strain, hearts flag. Bladders empty too often, bowels not often enough, and toxic proteins build up in the brain to form the plaque and the spaghetti-like tangles that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Not surprisingly, sixty-eight per cent of Medicare beneficiaries today have multiple chronic conditions. Not a lot of grace, force, or fascination in that.

In short, the optimistic narrative of pro-aging writers doesn’t line up with the dark story told by the human body. But maybe that’s not the point. “There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life,” Simone de Beauvoir wrote in her expansive 1970 study “The Coming of Age,” “and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning—devotion to individuals, to groups, or to causes—social, political, intellectual, or creative work.” But such meaning is not easily gained. In 1975, Robert Neil Butler, who had previously coined the term “ageism,” published “Why Survive? Being Old in America,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning study of society’s dereliction toward the nation’s aging population. “For many elderly Americans old age is a tragedy, a period of quiet despair, deprivation, desolation and muted rage,” he concluded.

Four years later, the British journalist Ronald Blythe, who must be one of the few living writers to have spoken to the last Victorians (he’s now just shy of ninety-seven), had a more sanguine perspective. His “ The View in Winter ,” containing oral histories of men and women at the end of their lives, is a lovely, sometimes personal, sometimes scholarly testament that reaches “no single conclusion. . . . Old age is full of death and full of life. It is a tolerable achievement and it is a disaster. It transcends desire and it taunts it. It is long enough and it is far from being long enough.” Some years after that, the great Chicago radio host Studs Terkel, who died at ninety-six, issued an American version of Blythe’s wintry landscape; in “Coming of Age” (1995), Terkel interrogated seventy-four “graybeards” (men and women over the age of seventy) for their thoughts on aging, politics, and the American way of life.

Now that we’re living longer, we have the time to write books about living longer—so many, in fact, that the Canadian critic Constance Rooke, in 1992, coined the term “Vollendungsroman,” a somewhat awkward complement to “Bildungsroman,” to describe novels about the end of life, such as Barbara Pym’s “ Quartet in Autumn ,” Kingsley Amis’s “ The Old Devils ,” and Wallace Stegner’s “ The Spectator Bird .” Since then, plenty of elderly protagonists have shown up in novels by Louis Begley (“ About Schmidt ”), Sue Miller (“ The Distinguished Guest ”), Saul Bellow (“ Ravelstein ”), Philip Roth (“ Everyman ”), and Margaret Drabble (“ The Dark Flood Rises ”). The realm of nonfiction has more than kept pace. Today, there’s a Web site that lists the top fifty books on aging, which, alas, omits William Ian Miller’s eccentric “ Losing It: In Which an Aging Professor Laments His Shrinking Brain ”(2011); Lynne Segal’s judicious but tough-minded “ Out of Time: The Pleasures and the Perils of Ageing ” (2013); and Martha C. Nussbaum and Saul Levmore’s smart, provocative “A ging Thoughtfully: Conversations About Retirement, Romance, Wrinkles, & Regret ” (2017), in which a philosopher and a law professor discuss everything from “Lear” to the transmission of assets. And, as was bound to happen, gerontology meets the Internet in “ Aging and the Digital Life Course ,” a collection of essays edited by David Prendergast and Chiara Garattini (2017). The library on old age has grown so voluminous that the fifty million Americans over the age of sixty-five could spend the rest of their lives reading such books, even as lusty retirees and power-lifting septuagenarians turn out new ones.

The most recent grand philosophical overview of aging is also by a woman, and lighting upon Helen Small’s “ The Long Life ” (2007) is like entering the University of Old Age after matriculating at a perfectly good college. Small, an Oxford don (and just forty-two when the book came out), wants to integrate old age into how we think about life. Pondering what it means to be someone who has completed a life cycle that Montaigne thought unnatural, she considers old age to be “connected into larger philosophical considerations,” whose depiction, whether literary or scientific, both drives and reflects emotional and ethical attitudes. And, echoing the philosopher Bernard Williams, she suggests that our lives accrue meaning over time, and therefore the story of the self is not complete until it experiences old age—the stage of life that helps us grasp who we are and what our life has meant.

Not everyone wants to find out if Small’s equation between old age and self-knowledge holds up. In 2014, The Atlantic ran an essay by the oncologist and bioethicist Ezekiel J. Emanuel, then fifty-seven, whose title alone, “ Why I Hope to Die at 75 ,” caused uneasy shuffling among seventy-year-olds. Emanuel believes that, by the time he hits this milestone, he will have lived a full life. He argues that by seventy-five “creativity, originality, and productivity are pretty much gone for the vast, vast majority of us.” Unlike Honoré and Applewhite, Emanuel thinks that “it is difficult, if not impossible, to generate new, creative thoughts, because we don’t develop a new set of neural connections that can supersede the existing network.” Although he doesn’t plan on suicide, he won’t actively prolong his life: no more cancer-screening tests (colonoscopies and the like); no pacemaker or stents. He wants to get out while the getting is good.

It’s an unselfish outlook, but not quite credible to unevolved people like me. Having entered my seventies, I don’t care that I may not have much to contribute after I’m seventy-five. I’m not sure I’ll have had that much to contribute before turning seventy-five. Also, Emanuel seems to be talking about artists, intellectuals, and scientists who will be pained by the prospect that their brain power and creativity may ebb in their twilight years, and not about your average working stiff who, after years of toiling in factories or offices, may want to spend more time golfing or reading books about golf. A grudging admiration for the good doctor ultimately gives way to disappointment when he reserves the right to change his mind, thereby confirming Montaigne’s gloomy projection that “our desires incessantly grow young again; we are always re-beginning to live.”

Let’s grant that there are as many ways to grow old as there are people going about it, especially since more of us keep chugging along despite our aches and ailments. “If I’d known I was going to live this long,” said Mickey Mantle (or possibly Mae West or Eubie Blake), “I would have taken better care of myself.” Mantle was only sixty-three when he died, but the truth is that many of us are going to be physically better off at eighty than Shakespeare’s Jaques could have imagined— avec teeth, avec sight, and avec hearing (which is to say: dental implants, glasses, and hearing aids). A long life is a gift. But I’m not sure we’re going to be grateful for it.

Normal aging is bad enough, but things become dire if dementia develops, the chances of which double every five years past the age of sixty-five. Applewhite, however, citing recent research, no longer thinks that dementia is “inevitable, or even likely.” May she live long and prosper, but, for those of us who have cared for spouses or parents with dementia, it’s not always a simple matter to know on whom the burden falls the heaviest. (One in three caregivers is sixty-five or older.)

Obviously, I’m not a candidate for the Old Person’s Hall of Fame. In fact, I plan to be a tattered coat upon a stick, nervously awaiting the second oblivion, which I’m reasonably certain will not have the same outcome as the first. Nonetheless, I like to think that I have some objectivity about what it’s like to grow old. My father lived to be almost a hundred and three, and most of my friends are now in their seventies. It may be risky to impugn the worthiness of old age, but I’ll take my cane to anyone who tries to stop me. At the moment, we seem to be compensating for past transgressions: far from devaluing old age, we assign it value it may not possess. Yes, we should live as long as possible, barring illness and infirmity, but, when it comes to the depredations of age, let’s not lose candor along with muscle tone. The goal, you could say, is to live long enough to think: I’ve lived long enough.

One would, of course, like to approach old age with grace and fortitude, but old age makes it difficult. Those who feel that it’s a welcome respite from the passions, anxieties, and troubles of youth or middle age are either very lucky or toweringly reasonable. Why rail against the inevitable—what good will it do? None at all. Complaining is both pointless and unseemly. Existence itself may be pointless and unseemly. No wonder we wonder at the meaning of it all. “At first we want life to be romantic; later, to be bearable; finally, to be understandable,” Louise Bogan wrote. Professor Small would agree, and though I am a fan of her book, I have my doubts about whether the piling on of years really does add to our understanding of life. Doesn’t Regan say of her raging royal father, “Tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself”? The years may broaden experience and tint perspective, but is wisdom or contentment certain to follow?

A contented old age probably depends on what we were like before we became old. Vain, self-centered people will likely find aging less tolerable than those who seek meaning in life by helping others. And those fortunate enough to have lived a full and productive life may exit without undue regret. But if you’re someone who—oh, for the sake of argument—is unpleasantly surprised that people in their forties or fifties give you a seat on the bus, or that your doctors are forty years younger than you are, you just might resent time’s insistent drumbeat. Sure, there’s life in the old boy yet, but certain restrictions apply. The body—tired, aching, shrinking—now quite often embarrasses us. Many older men have to pee right after they pee, and many older women pee whenever they sneeze. Pipher and company might simply say “Gesundheit” and urge us on. Life, they insist, doesn’t necessarily get worse after seventy or eighty. But it does, you know. I don’t care how many seniors are loosening their bedsprings every night; something is missing.

It’s not just energy or sexual prowess but the thrill of anticipation. Even if you’re single, can you ever feel again the rush of excitement that comes with the first brush of the lips, the first moment when clothes drop to the floor? Who the hell wants to tear his or her clothes off at seventy-five? Now we dim the lights and fold our slacks and hope we don’t look too soft, too wrinkled, too old. Yes, mature love allows for physical imperfections, but wouldn’t we rather be desired for our beauty than forgiven for our flaws? These may seem like shallow regrets, and yet the loss of pleasure in one’s own body, the loss of pleasure in knowing that one’s body pleases others, is a real one.

I can already hear the objections: If my children are grown and happy; if my grandchildren light up when they see me; if I’m healthy and financially secure; if I’m reasonably satisfied with what I’ve accomplished; if I feel more comfortable now that I no longer have to prove myself—why, then, the loss of youth is a fair trade-off. Those are a lot of “if”s, but never mind. We should all make peace with aging. And so my hat is off to Dr. Oliver Sacks , who chose to regard old age as “a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together.” At eighty-two, he rediscovered the joy of gefilte fish, which, as he noted, would usher him out of life as it had ushered him into it.

“No wise man ever wished to be younger,” Swift asserted, never having met me. But this doesn’t mean that we have to see old age as something other than what it is. It may complete us, but in doing so it defeats us. “Life is slow dying,” Philip Larkin wrote before he stopped dying, at sixty-three—a truth that young people, who are too busy living, cavalierly ignore. Should it give them pause, they’ll discover that just about every book on the subject advocates a “positive” attitude toward aging in order to maintain a sense of satisfaction and to achieve a measure of wisdom. And yet it seems to me that a person can be both wise and unhappy, wise and regretful, and even wise and dubious about the wisdom of growing old.

When Socrates declared that philosophy is the practice of dying, he was saying that thought itself is shaped by mortality, and it’s because our existence is limited that we’re able to think past those limits. Time has us in its grip, and so we devise stories of an afterlife in which we exist unshackled by days and years and the decay they represent. But where does that get us, beyond the vague suspicion that immortality—at least in the shape of the vengeful Yahweh or the spiteful Greek and Roman gods—is no guarantee of wisdom? Then again, if you’re the sort of person who sees the glass as one-eighth full rather than seven-eighths empty, you might not worry about such matters. Instead, you’ll greet each new day with gratitude, despite coughing up phlegm and tossing down a dozen pills.

But what do I know? I’m just one person, who at seventy-one doesn’t feel as good as he did at sixty-one, and who is fairly certain that he’s going to feel even worse at eighty-one. I simply know what men and women have always known: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever.” If only the writer had stopped there. Unfortunately, he went on to add, “In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. . . . The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise? This too is meaningless.” No young person could have written that. ♦

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Aging — Successful Aging: Fulfilling Life

Successful Aging: Fulfilling Life

• Categories: Aging Elderly

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Published: Sep 16, 2023

Words: 744 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Defining successful aging, factors contributing to successful aging, challenges and strategies.

• Physical Health: Maintaining good physical health and functional abilities are essential aspects of successful aging. This includes regular exercise, a balanced diet, and managing chronic health conditions.
• Mental Well-being: Cognitive health is a vital component. Successful aging involves preserving mental acuity, memory, and emotional well-being. Lifelong learning and mental stimulation play significant roles.
• Social Engagement: Staying connected with others and maintaining a strong social network is crucial. Active social engagement contributes to a sense of purpose and belonging.
• Emotional Resilience: Coping effectively with life's challenges and maintaining emotional resilience is a key element of successful aging. This involves adapting to change and finding ways to manage stress.
• Financial Security: Economic stability and financial security are essential. Having the means to support oneself and enjoy leisure activities adds to a fulfilling life in later years.
• Purpose and Meaning: Feeling a sense of purpose and fulfillment is a cornerstone of successful aging. Engaging in activities that bring joy and satisfaction contributes to overall well-being.

Healthcare and Wellness

Lifestyle choices, social connections, financial stability, mental stimulation, emotional resilience, adaptation and resilience, lifelong learning, social engagement, healthcare advocacy.

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The Top 9 Nonfiction Books About Aging and Growing Old

“Books have gotten me this far in life. I don’t see why I’d stop now!” Those were the words of Marla when I asked her if she ever thought she’d stop reading so much. She is an inveterate bookworm, and even when she’s taking day trips , she’s got a paperback tucked away somewhere in her bag, ready to be pulled out. Once I asked her if she preferred fiction or nonfiction, and to say she threw me a quizzical look would be an understatement. It was less throwing shade than throwing a total solar eclipse. She looked at me as if I asked if she wanted air or water today. “I love ‘em both,” she explained. “Fiction takes me inside other people, but so does nonfiction. It takes me inside the brain of an author. They explore ideas, or history, or themselves. I don’t see much difference, really. Fiction is truth, and nonfiction is creative. At least, if they do it right.” We agree, and we hope that we did it right in our list of 9 novels about aging and growing old . But this week we’re going to look at nonfiction. These come in many different varieties, but they all speak to the promise and the difficulties of aging. They speak to how we live now, and how we can help change attitudes about older adults.   This is by no means an exhaustive list. Indeed, aging is one of the hottest avenues of nonfiction publishing, thanks largely to the huge and growing number of Baby Boomer retirees. With such an ever-expanding body of literature, there will be a lot on our list of 9 nonfiction books about growing old and enjoying life that we miss. So be sure to let us know your favorites!

The Types of Nonfiction

As we said, this is not a complete list of books (we’ve left out drama and poetry, though we may get to those at some point). It’s not even a total list of nonfiction. But in reviewing the literature about aging, there were several kinds of books that stood out.

• Sociology books . These talk about attitudes toward aging, how they are changing, and what that means.
• Self-help/motivationa l. These provide a guide toward living your best life, in everything from maintaining your health to making friends to taking up hang-gliding in the Pyrenees.
• Memoirs . From the very famous to the obscure, people have always been interested in the lives of others, including their aging process. Memoirs of a person’s experience with this part of life aren’t usually just full of humor and mordant observations, they help us prepare for and understand our own lives.

Needless to say—and as you’ll see,—there is a lot of overlap in the categories. It isn’t cut-and-dry. Like everything else in life, there are no clear answers, but that’s exciting. These nine books cover a wide range of topics, and we know you’ll find something that resonates with you, inspires you, and helps you see yourself and the world just a little bit differently.  

9 Best Nonfiction Books About Aging

• Aging and the Digital Life Course . David Prendergast and Chiara Garattini, editors. This collection of essays and papers highlights how technology has changed how we age. The essays don’t just cover technological developments, but serve as a guide for how older adults can navigate this new world and use technology to make life more full and healthy. The essays cover tops as varied and gaming and robotics, advances in caregiving and how to manage dementia and chronic disease. It covers reality and virtual reality. We’ve covered the same subject in our Technology Section , but this book is a rich exploration of the issues by world-recognized experts.
• This Chair Rocks . Ashton Applewhite. We were grateful to have Dr. Applewhite speak at IOA just over a year ago, touring with her book about new ways to look at aging and death. Aging is a time of celebration and accomplishment. This is a fiercely activist book about combating ageism, both in society and in the way we act toward ourselves and others. And it’s funny!
• Cicero’s How to Grow Old . Marcus Tullius Cicero. This book is certainly a little different than our modern takes on aging. The Roman philosopher and statesman was exiled to his estate by Caesar and wrote about getting older. These are his works on this subject, which we recognize not for their antiquity, but for their universality. He may have been writing in the shadow of Caesar, but the lessons remain true today. For instance: “ For old age is respected only if it defends itself, maintains its rights, submits to no one, and rules over its domain until its last breath.”
• Aging Thoughtfully . Martha Nussbaum and Saul Levmore. A prickly sort of book, this is a conversation about aging by two philosophers who discuss everything from economics to skincare to love. The two often delve into the esoteric and dive deeply into a huge number of topics. Because of that, it isn’t the easiest book, but it is full of warmth and erudition, education and humanity. The subtitle, “Conversations about Retirement, Romance, Wrinkles, and Regret,” says it all.
• The New Old Me . Meredith Maran. After retirement, Meredith lost her best friend and her life savings, and then was left by her wife. At 60, she was starting over and reinventing herself. Described as a “ lusty, kickass, post-divorce memoir,” this is an LGBT memoir about growing old in southern California, an area that worships youth. Meredith doesn’t let that bother her. She just keeps going.  
• Speak, Memory . Vladimir Nabakov. One of the all-time great memoirs, the brilliant author of Lolita and Pale Fire examines not just his youth and his life, but the nature of his memory. Was he remembering right? What was he making up? What was he forgetting? All of our lives are made up of the stories we tell ourselves, and Nabokov brilliantly examines the tension between what we believe happened and what might have actually happened. It’s a great way to understand how we remember things and how we don’t.
• I Remember Nothing . Nora Ephron. The sadly-late Ephron has a memoir about getting older that is seemingly frothier than Nabokov’s, but it contains just as much wisdom. Full of great stories and self-deprecating wit, the TV and movie giant takes a look at her life, where she’s been, and where she wanted to go. That she was taken too soon to get there tints the book with tragedy, but her insight, wit, humor, and love will shine even through your tears.
• Being Mortal . Atul Gawande. An enormous bestseller, Gawande writes about the fundamental fact of humanity: that we are mortal and that we are aware of our mortality, an awareness which grows as we age. Gawande explores the history of how we deal with the inevitability of death and helps us understand what dying means. It is learned, sober, and compassionate, with thoughtfulness and a searing, searching mind evident on every page. It might not give you every answer, but will help you figure out the questions.
• The Year of Magical Thinking . Joan Didion. Joan Didion is one of the great writers of the 20th-century, beloved by the coolest people. When her husband died suddenly, literally in mid-sentence, she went into deep shock, entering the land of grief. She calls grief “the most general affliction”, but while we have all suffered it, and will all suffer it, it is difficult to explore. Didion takes us through her mind, through the reactions we have to grief, the alternations between numbness and rage, between sublime sorrow and the distracted day-to-day. It’s keenly, almost impossible-finely observed and funny. It’s hard and beautiful and challenging and welcoming and filled with sacred terror and holy grace. In other words, it is life in the reality of death.

Finding Your Book

As we said, nonfiction books about aging and growing old come in many varieties. You might be a memoir person, a historian, or a sociologist. That’s all great. There is certainly something for you. Think about the kind of books you like to read, and find one that fits. And then find one that doesn’t. For reading, like life, is all about exploration. It’s about turning a corner and not being sure what you’ll see. It’s about opening your eyes to a strange vista in an unknown and uncertain land and walking until you find your footing. I’ll leave the last word to Marla. “Reading for me is about getting angry. It’s about being challenged. It’s about falling in love and falling out of it again. It’s just everything. It’s life between those covers, you know? That’s why I never want my book to close.” At Institute on Aging, our programs and services help older adults, their families, and caregivers explore aging together, through good times and bad, as an adventure and a journey. Contact us today to learn more.

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Growing Up and Growing Old

As the ageing process gets underway, this becomes more challenging..

Posted January 3, 2018

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Growing up and growing old are two of the most significant experiences and achievements of human consciousness that become more challenging as the aging process gets underway. First, there is the ability to objectively (courtesy of the five senses) perceive the existential, physical nature of everything happening around us in the course of a typical day. Second is the ability to subjectively (courtesy of mind and brain) psychologically experience the range and intensity of feeling, thought, and evaluation that give meaning to all such perceived happenings as we move through the day.

Yet in striving to maintain, if not sharpen, perceptual experiences of the outside world (which I think most older types try to do by keeping the senses alert) many aging individuals tend to psychologically withdraw from keeping up with the frequently changing nature and values of daily ongoing life. They have a tendency to live in the past, finding it easier, and even more meaningful, than modifying or changing the fixed and familiar structure of the mind as new challenging mental attitudes to life present themselves. In fact, they can become irritated by the need to re-think and re-feel their familiar and long-established mindset.

However, it would seem to be pretty well established that in retreating from such new challenges to life’s ongoing processes—thus diminishing the expanding range of consciousness that nature’s old age routine incurs—the will to keep on living is unconsciously weakened.

There’s an old saying, "Keep the Body in motion, and the Mind in action," which obviously is intended to define the best way to keep growing up, rather than growing old.

I was talking in this vein the other day to an elderly man in a local coffee house. He said he had stopped thinking about his daily existence and saw no point in dwelling on events of the past. After all, he said, he was now 75 years of age, an old man. He had few opinions about things anymore and was just growing old, coasting to the end.

There are times when you sense the futility of argument or even discussion, and this was one such time. I just didn’t feel that he would have much interest in my own experience that consciousness, whatever one's age, continues to ask the question: Why and wherefore, to what end? And it would seem that in continuing to live an active life as long as physically possible (I have just had my 94th birthday and I keep away from the armchair) that the mind intensifies its quest and the body pushes one to remain active.

The result? One continues to psychologically grow up. I am talking here from my own experience of aging, as the mental overview of life continues. I must say, the questions were much less frequent and less intense when I was 75.

Two quotations, some 2,500 years apart, come to mind.

“Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom. When the passions have relaxed their hold, you have escaped not from one master, but from many,” said Plato.

Oscar Wilde wrote: “The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.”

Graham Collier , the author of What The Hell Are The Neurons Up To? , is an exhibiting landscape and portrait artist in Britain, an artist-philosopher in America, and a frequent Antarctic voyager.

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Growing Old - Free Essay Examples and Topic Ideas

Growing old is a natural process that occurs as the body ages over time. As people age, they may experience physical changes, such as reduced mobility or chronic health conditions. They may also experience social changes, such as retirement or loss of loved ones. However, growing old can also bring with it wisdom, experience, and a greater appreciation for life. It is important to maintain a positive attitude and engage in activities that promote mental and physical health to make the most of your golden years.

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Aging Essay Topics

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Reflections on Aging and The Comfort of Growing Older

Thanks for visiting InnerSelf.com , where there are 20,000+ life-altering articles promoting "New Attitudes and New Possibilities." All articles are translated into 30+ languages .  Subscribe to InnerSelf Magazine, published weekly, and Marie T Russell's Daily Inspiration. InnerSelf Magazine has been published since 1985.

I glance at myself in the mirror and notice what time has allowed me — new lines, it seems, almost daily. I see slightly puckered lips, a place I never knew wrinkles formed. I see sagging cheeks that fold into my smile; little bags under my eyes that don’t disappear with enough sleep. This new face covers a much younger mind, caught somewhere between 30 and 40.

I now have officially become someone who looks good ‘for my age,’ or so I have been told, which is another sign of aging. People don’t make such a comment unless you are old. They also say that 60 is the new 50 and 50 the new 40, and so on, but really? I believe that the new numbers are only created by the very same age group who doesn’t want to admit they are older. Certainly, there is validity in thinking that I look younger at my age than my mother did, judging from the pictures, but perhaps she was thinking the same thing about the way she looked compared to her mother.

Young For My Age or Too Old for Yours?

I bring my grandson to the playground and it’s clear to everyone that I am not his mother. Although, my ego must remind me now and then that someone asked me if he had a sibling and I responded, “Oh yes! She is six weeks old.” At which point, the blessed woman stated that I looked so good for just having had the baby. I laughed out loud and figured, while younger than I, the woman must have had cataracts.

I don’t have to ask for senior discounts; I get them automatically now, often by the employees who are about 40 years younger than I. I assume I look ancient to them while they look about 12 to me. Doctors, policemen, firemen, all look about the same age as the employees who give me the senior discounts. Were they always this young? Probably, but I wasn’t always this old.

Men who used to turn their heads to the left or the right as I walked by, now just face straight ahead. Men who would stop talking to each other and whisper as I walked by, now don’t miss a beat in their conversations, which provides me great relief, to be honest, from misogynistic behavior. My aging face, and, of course, my body, have gratefully relieved me of those sexist catcalls.

I am now invisible to most of the male world, a slow disappearance I have been adjusting to over the last 20 years. The process has finalized and to be honest, I am peacefully content with the smaller population surrounding me.

Aging Brings Relief

I have three adult children, which means they survived my youth and my parenting. I am old in their eyes, too. Of course, they will make kind remarks like, “You’re not old, Mom.” But I know what they mean, for I used to say this to my own mother to make her feel better when she lamented about aging. I consoled her, but inside, I was saying, Yes, Mom, you are old!  I am at the age that my parents were when they were old!

Yet, aging also provides some relief from many pressures. Fewer people ask me my opinion, which is ironic, as I finally know more now than I did when I thought I knew so much. Not to be asked what I think has its rewards. I am not involved in others’ business and decisions and don’t say the wrong thing, so I am not blamed for my perceived faulty advice.

Social Media Minus 90%

I have Facebook and Instagram accounts, but I use only about 10% of their functions, very much the way I use my computer. I know there is so much more, but I don’t have the patience to spend working through my confusion.

If I ask my son one more time to explain Twitter to me, I think he will scream and I don’t blame him. While I understand some, I have a hard time conceptualizing abstract entities like The Cloud or why a friend of a friend pops up on my Newsfeed and then suddenly disappears.

Occasionally my frustration grows along with my courage so I ask other younger social media pros to help me. Their fingers fly across the keyboards along with their explanations and I am immediately lost, reminding me that it is better to suffer my ignorance in silence. I now accept that I will never understand what is second nature to the two generations who have come after me.

The Comfort of Growing Older

I still have a strong and vibrant career, yet no longer do I have to build this career—to jump through so many hoops, suffer through painful interviews, and constantly update my resumé. Growing older within a job and position I have had since I was young provides me with the pure joy in truly knowing what I am doing.

My talents have been polished over three decades. I have agonized enough about balancing family and career and now there is no more agony and balancing. I am riding the wake of the wave without fear of being pulled under. It’s the home stretch. There is something to be said for my hard-earned knowledge and experience.

Younger souls might follow current teaching trends and utilize new technological tools, but I have successful years of proof. Most of all, aging has given me the gift of not having to prove my worth at work; actually, I do not have to prove anything any more in any area of my life. Another gift of my many years.

Detaching From The Mainstream

Aging is a slow detachment from mainstream society: clothing styles, restaurants, movies, music, jargon, advances in social media. I have vanished from the desirable demographic; my societal relevance has waned, yet I actually feel just fine about this. I

don’t mind growing old, for I have a sense of freedom now that I never had before. My motto: “If I don’t do it now, when will I?” So whatever ‘it’ is, I do more of it!

I am grateful for my years and for my aging. The gift of timeless youth is to die young. The memory of someone cut down in her prime is always of a wrinkle-free face, one of eternal softness and roundness, a face of sadness and loss. My good fortune is to age and joyfully earn each wrinkle, sag, and bag, reflected in my mirror.

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What is So Good About Growing Old

Forget about senior moments. The great news is that researchers are discovering some surprising advantages of aging

Helen Fields

Even as certain mental skills decline with age—what was that guy’s name again?—scientists are finding the mind gets sharper at a number of vitally important abilities. In a University of Illinois study, older air traffic controllers excelled at their cognitively taxing jobs, despite some losses in short-term memory and visual spatial processing. How so? They were expert at navigating, juggling multiple aircraft simultaneously and avoiding collisions.

People also learn how to deal with social conflicts more effectively. For a 2010 study, researchers at the University of Michigan presented “Dear Abby” letters to 200 people and asked what advice they would give. Subjects in their 60s were better than younger ones at imagining different points of view, thinking of multiple resolutions and suggesting compromises.

It turns out that managing emotions is a skill in itself, one that takes many of us decades to master. For a study published this year, German researchers had people play a gambling game meant to induce regret. Unlike 20-somethings, those in their 60s didn’t agonize over losing, and they were less likely to try to redeem their loss by later taking big risks.

These social skills may bring huge benefits. In 2010, researchers at Stony Brook University analyzed a telephone survey of hundreds of thousands of Americans and found that people over 50 were happier overall, with anger declining steadily from the 20s through the 70s and stress falling off a cliff in the 50s.

This may be news to people who equate being old with being sad and alone, but it fits with a body of work by Laura Carstensen, a psychologist at Stanford. She led a study that followed people ages 18 to 94 for a decade and found that they got happier and their emotions bounced around less. Such studies reveal that negative emotions such as sadness, anger and fear become less pronounced than in our drama-filled younger years.

Cornell sociologist Karl Pillemer and co-workers interviewed about 1,200 older people for the book 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest American s. “Many people said something along these lines: ‘I wish I’d learned to enjoy life on a daily basis and enjoy the moment when I was in my 30s instead of my 60s,’” he says. Elderly interviewees are likely to “describe the last five or ten years as the happiest years of their lives.”

“We have a seriously negative stereotype of the 70s and beyond,” says Pillemer, “and that stereotype is typically incorrect.”

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Growing Old

By Matthew Arnold

‘Growing Old’ is about the reality of aging and how ones youthful expectations will not be fulfilled as one’s body losing beauty and strength.

Matthew Arnold

Nationality: English

Poem Analyzed by Emma Baldwin

B.A. English (Minor: Creative Writing), B.F.A. Fine Art, B.A. Art Histories

This poem by poet Matthew Arnold, ‘ Growing Old,’  is made up of seven stanzas , each of which is five lines long. This piece was first published in 1867 and has no rhyme scheme , but the lines match up from stanza to stanza, in approximate length and syllable number.

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• 2 Analysis of Growing Old
• 3 About Matthew Arnold

‘ Growing Old’ is a piece full of questions, answers, and descriptions of what old age is actually like. The poem begins with an initial question that is answered by the ending of the poem, “What is it to grow old?” This question is expanded on and described in the following stanzas. The first describes the loss of physical beauty and the second about the loss of physical strength and feeling in limbs. The third stanza of the poem begins to speak on the expectations one had about age during youth and how these expectations are not fulfilled. Old age is not a warm sunset, it is not to look back on one’s life with fondness. In fact, trapped in one’s body as a prison, one feels as if they were never young. The poem concludes by describing how by the end of life one will come to hate their own body, blaming their aging prison for their loss of spirit, strength, and emotion.

Analysis of Growing Old

First stanza.

What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The luster of the eye? Is it for beauty to forego her wreath? —Yes, but not this alone.

This piece begins with a central question that will be contemplated, discussed, and answered throughout the rest of the poem.

What is it to grow old?

It is important to return to this question as one reads through the piece. Another question follows, expanding on the first. This question begins to ask about the physical degradation of aging. Whether ‘Growing Old’ is about losing the glorious form of one’s body, or the “luster” in the eye. Another question follows, and is answered, making up the fourth and fifth lines of the poem.

Is it for beauty to forego her wreath? —Yes, but not this alone.

The last question of this stanza asks whether aging means that Beauty, as an entity, will take away, “her wreath.” One’s physical beauty, embodied as a wreath given by Beauty herself, will degrade and one will no longer receive it. The last line of ‘ Growing Old’ answers “yes” to these questions but stipulates that answer by saying, it is these things, but it also more.

Second Stanza

Is it to feel our strength— Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay? Is it to feel each limb Grow stiffer, every function less exact, Each nerve more loosely strung?

The second stanza of the piece begins with more questions, these around the issue of losing the strength and function of the body.

Is it to feel our strength— Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay?

Not only will the bloom, the beauty, of the body degrade, so too will its strength. This stanza is asking whether it is this feeling of one’s strength leaving the body what aging is about. The next lines expand on this idea, giving it more detail. The last three lines speak on individual limbs “grow[ing] stiffer” and losing “exact[ness]” of “function.” Each nerve of these limbs is “more loosely strung.” No part of the body is as strong, sensitive, or functional as it used to be.

Third Stanza

Yes, this, and more; but not Ah, ’tis not what in youth we dreamed ’twould be! ’Tis not to have our life Mellowed and softened as with sunset glow, A golden day’s decline.

The third stanza speaks on the loss of hope of what the future will be and a disappointment that old age does not bring what one expected in their youth. The first line references the last stanza, just as happens at the end of the first stanza, the statements are confirmed, but the speaker makes sure to note that these are still not the only things that aging is about.

This stanza also speaks about what one’s hopes, and expectations, of old age were, and how they have not been fulfilled. Old age is,

…not what in youth we dreamed ‘twould be!

The speaker then goes through what those expectations were and how they were not fulfilled. It is not, he says, to

…have our life Mellowed and softened as with sunset glow,

Life does not become simpler, warmer, or easier with old age. In reality, there is not the peace of a sunset that one might expect. The ending of ones life is not, “A golden day’s decline.”

Fourth Stanza

’Tis not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirred; And weep, and feel the fullness of the past, The years that are no more.

The fourth stanza continues on this topic, giving further information about what the end of life is truly like.

’Tis not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirred;

These first three lines of the fourth stanza describe how there is no height of wisdom which one reaches in which they can look over the world, and their own life, and see the truth, with a full and emotional heart. Old age does not bring happiness in having lived a life well-lived. In fact, the speaker says, there is no “fullness of the past” to feel and weep, happily and fondly, over.

Fifth Stanza

It is to spend long days And not once feel that we were ever young; It is to add, immured In the hot prison of the present, month To month with weary pain.

There is not the fond reminiscing on life, but the feeling that old age is all that one ever experienced. It is endless and all-encompassing. The speaker describes feeling trapped in the present, in a “hot prison,” a miserable depiction, with months and months passing “with weary pain.” This experience of old age feels inescapable, one is trapped in their own “weary” body.

Sixth Stanza

It is to suffer this, And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel. Deep in our hidden heart Festers the dull remembrance of a change, But no emotion—none.

It is not all of these things that one might expect but instead is to suffer these months of pain. There are still emotions, the speaker stipulates, but they are half what they used to be. They are feeble in comparison to those they experienced in their youth. One will know that,

Deep in our hidden heart

There are experiences and emotions of “change” but one is not able to access the emotion of them. There is just nothing there when one probes what used to move them.

Seventh Stanza

It is—last stage of all— When we are frozen up within, and quite The phantom of ourselves, To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man.

The final stanza of this piece is written as the “last stage of all,” when one is no longer even able to move.

When we are frozen up within, and quite The phantom of ourselves,

As one reaches the end of their life they are no longer able to physically take care of themselves, and all of the person they used to be is trapped inside one’s body. They are unable to express or support themselves. ‘ Growing Old’ concludes with these two lines,

To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man.

It is important at this point to return to the initial question of the poem,

It is, the speaker concludes, to hear the world, one’s family and friends, applaud one’s life and everything one has accomplished, while on the inside, the “hollow ghost” that was once full of spirit and emotion, blames the living body it inhabits for what is happening. One turns against their own body, they are trapped in their own “weary,” “painful,” prison.

About Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold , poet, and essayist, was born in Laleham, Middlesex, in 1822 and was quickly recognized as a talented poet. He completed an undergraduate degree at Balliol College, Oxford University after which he taught Classics at Rugby School. Arnold would then work for thirty-five years as a government school inspector, during which he acquired an interest in education and influenced his poetic works. He established his reputation as a poet and became Professor of Poetry at Oxford and wrote a number of his critical works during this time.

His poetry is known for its contemplation of isolation, the dwindling faith of his age, and his subtle style . His work is often compared to that of Sylvia Plath and W.B. Yeats. Matthew Arnold died in 1888 in Liverpool.

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Hello Please help me with the use of literary devices in this poem.

The poet uses a lot of rhetorical questions. enjambent lines feature throughout, and quite a lot of imagary, in particular metaphors are heavily used.

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“Growing Old” by Matthew Arnold Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Significance of the poem

This poem is sending a clear message about the process through which people go through as they grow old. The author points out what it means to grow old in terms of form and shape in the first and second stanzas. The poem mentions that there is reflection in the past when there were dreams which are now not true. It is not to view the world from a perspective and think about how the past was filled with many things. In the last three verses the author indicates that this process is about spending long and painful days alone, feeling life deep in our hearts without emotions and lastly we are lost in thoughts of how the world is putting blame on the man who lived.

The choice for this particular poem is perfect for me because of the fact that I have very relatives that I can associate with it. Specifically both my parents are aging and it is obvious that each and everyone will undergo this process. My mother especially is not in good health and I can clearly see the pain and suffering that is expressed in the poem. This poem makes me realize how it is important to be prepared for this inevitable process in life. This is because of the fact that I am in my late forties and it is clear that the addressed age is not very far from me.

The language in which the poem has been written is quite commendable and I really have a passion for the words that have been used in the poem. In fact everybody despite age differences can read and enjoy this poem.

The biography of the author reveals that his early life was full of many things. For instance he used to do many things in his life. This included things like going to clubs, he liked going out for dinner and he was also fond of fishing and shooting. All this things influenced his poetic language and styles. In this particular poem he mentions “And weep, and feel the fulness of the past, The years that are no more!”. By these words he reveals that indeed his past life was full of many things.

In his early life he was an inspector of schools. This is a position that requires someone to have capacity to accomplish tasks using the necessary strength. Such capability can not be found in a person who is aged. This has been clearly reflected in the poem when he says “Is it to feel our strength”. This expresses the fact that the strength that one has during his years of work tends to decline as a result of the aging process.

The author has achieved his objective of sending the message right concerning how people undergo the process of edging. He has mentioned specific changes that occur in an individual during old age. For instance decline in physical strength in the limbs, visual abilities characterize a person who is old enough. During this time there is actual reflection of the past. This is because most people have very lively pasts that are full of many activities that are worth remembering. During old age this past comes into the mind and the old people regret where they did not achieve as they do not have another chance to accomplish the things.The author takes a very simplistic approach in his language and style. He does not use very complicated words to bring out the main theme of the poem which is the process of growing old in life.

He uses questioning style in his art. This is demonstrated when he attracts the attention of the writer with the first sentence asking “What is it to grow old?”. This manages to keep the audience focused especially in how the question is answered throughout the poem. This style manages to help the author to stick to his theme and avoids going away from the main message of the poem.

Through his style the author has managed to strike a distinction between what it means to grow old and what it does not imply. This has been achieved through the use of questions in the poem.

The writer has also employed parables in this piece of work. When he says “In the hot prison of the present”. This can be interpreted to mean that the present life of someone who is growing old limits or burrs the person from certain activities due to the age factor. When the writer says “It is last stage of all”, this is symbolic of the final stage in life that all people are supposed to go through before dying if all conditions were kept constant.

Therefore through his language and style the author has highlighted the main things that occur in life as people grow old and why there is a need to understand the old people.

What are the major characteristics of the process of growing old?

Stanley Kunitz (1936), Matthew Arnold: A Biography, Web.

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IvyPanda. (2021, December 7). "Growing Old" by Matthew Arnold. https://ivypanda.com/essays/growing-old-by-matthew-arnold/

""Growing Old" by Matthew Arnold." IvyPanda , 7 Dec. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/growing-old-by-matthew-arnold/.

IvyPanda . (2021) '"Growing Old" by Matthew Arnold'. 7 December.

IvyPanda . 2021. ""Growing Old" by Matthew Arnold." December 7, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/growing-old-by-matthew-arnold/.

1. IvyPanda . ""Growing Old" by Matthew Arnold." December 7, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/growing-old-by-matthew-arnold/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . ""Growing Old" by Matthew Arnold." December 7, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/growing-old-by-matthew-arnold/.

Essay on Getting Older

Students are often asked to write an essay on Getting Older in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Getting Older

What it means to grow older.

Growing older is a part of life. It means you have more birthdays and get taller. Your body changes, and you can do more things by yourself. As you grow, you learn new stuff at school and from friends.

Changes in Your Body

When you get older, your body grows. You might get stronger and faster. Some kids can’t wait to be tall like their parents. Your body also starts to look different as you become a teenager.

Learning More

Getting older means learning more. You can read better, solve harder math problems, and understand the world more. School gets tougher, but you can handle it because you’re growing up.

Responsibilities

With age comes more chores and duties. You might help at home or take care of a pet. Being older means you can make more decisions by yourself, which is exciting!

Friendships

250 words essay on getting older, what does getting older mean.

Getting older is something that happens to everyone. It is the process of growing up or aging. As time passes, children become teenagers, teenagers turn into adults, and adults grow into old age. This journey is natural and part of life.

Changes in Our Bodies

When people get older, their bodies change. Kids grow taller and stronger. Adults might find they can’t run as fast or jump as high as they used to. Older people sometimes have gray hair and may need glasses to read. These changes are normal and happen to everyone.

Learning and Wisdom

With each year, people learn new things. They go to school, make friends, and have different experiences. Getting older means you have more time to learn from mistakes and understand the world better. Older people often know a lot because they have lived through many things.

Responsibilities Grow

As you get older, you have more jobs to do. A young child might only need to pick up toys, but a teenager might have to do homework and help around the house. Adults have even more to do, like working and taking care of their families.

Celebrating Birthdays

One fun part of getting older is celebrating birthdays. Each birthday is special because it marks another year of life. It’s a time to be with friends and family, eat cake, and think about all the good things that happened in the past year.

500 Words Essay on Getting Older

What does it mean to get older.

When we talk about getting older, we mean the process of changing as time passes. For humans, this means growing up from a baby to a child, then into a teenager, and finally into an adult. With each year, we celebrate a birthday which marks us being one year older. As we grow, our bodies and minds change in many ways.

Physical Changes

One of the first things we notice as we get older is how our bodies change. Children grow taller, their voices might change, and they start to look more like grown-ups. Adults might notice that they do not move as quickly as they used to or that their hair starts to turn gray. These changes are a natural part of life, and they happen to everyone.

Learning and Knowledge

With each year, we get more responsibilities. Kids might start with simple tasks like cleaning their room or feeding a pet. As they grow, they might be responsible for doing homework or helping out more at home. Adults have even bigger responsibilities, like taking care of their families or paying bills.

Emotions and Relationships

As people get older, they also learn more about their feelings and relationships. Young children might feel happy or sad but not understand why. Teenagers begin to experience more complex emotions and learn about friendships and maybe even love. Adults have many different types of relationships with family, friends, and coworkers, and they learn how to manage their emotions in all these situations.

Health and Taking Care

Wisdom and making choices.

One of the best parts about getting older is becoming wiser. Wisdom means having good judgment and making smart choices. Kids might learn this by deciding who to be friends with or how to spend their allowance. Adults use their wisdom to make bigger decisions, like buying a house or choosing a job.

Getting older is a journey that everyone goes on. It’s about growing up, changing, and learning new things. Even though it can sometimes be scary to think about all the changes, it’s also exciting. Every birthday is a chance to celebrate how much we’ve grown and all the things we’ve learned. So, getting older is not just about the number of candles on your cake; it’s about the adventures you’ve had and the ones that are still to come.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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I've been a student in the UK for 6 years. But my family in the US is getting older, and I'm torn about moving back to be with them.

• Scarlett Kiaras-Attari, 24, grew up romanticizing the idea of living in the UK.
• In 2018, she moved to Edinburgh for her undergraduate studies and later pursued her master's and Ph.D.
• She recently considered moving back to the US to be closer to family.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Scarlett Kiaras-Attari, a marketing executive and education content creator who moved to the UK for her studies. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I knew from a young age that I wanted to live in the UK someday.

I was born in London to an Iranian-British father and an American mother, but I was raised in Louisville, Kentucky. Throughout my childhood,   my dad shared   fond memories of growing up in the UK, and I became enamored by the idea of living there again.

When deciding where to go for college, it was an easy decision to go to the UK , as I also hold a British passport. But where I grew up, it's not common to go abroad for college . Most of my peers stayed in the South — even moving to New England was considered far.

I applied to a few safety schools in the US but got accepted to the University of Edinburgh. In 2018, I packed my bags and moved to Scotland .

I enjoyed student life in Scotland

At Edinburgh , I could study what I wanted — History — and didn't have to fiddle with other subjects, which would have been required at most liberal arts programs in the US.

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The price was also a huge advantage. I paid around  $24,500  a year, compared to  $67,446 for out-of-state tuition at the University of Chicago, where I had also applied.

As a student under 22, I could travel for free by bus throughout Scotland.

The advantage of studying there was also being able to experience new cultures and visit other European countries .

After graduating, I had no desire to return to the US

I wanted to pursue a master's in medieval history. Although there are so many great departments in the US for religious studies and medieval history, my mentors at school had all studied at Oxbridge — colleges across Oxford and Cambridge. So, in 2022, I followed their advice and pursued a master's in Medieval History at the University of Oxford.

When I finished my master's this year, I still wasn't ready to leave. I didn't want to return to the US because all my friends were in the UK. If I returned, I would have to start again to build connections and friendships.

I was in this middle ground where I wished I could just pack up everything and move everything in my life altogether at once. That's the difficulty of expat life — there's the US in the UK version of myself, and I'm always teetering between two places.

Looking back, I cringe at how obsessed I was with the UK

I was fascinated by William Shakespeare's "Richard III" and adored "Horrible Histories" — a British children's TV show about historical events — and other media that came from the UK.

When you romanticize a place, you think it can do no wrong. After my move, I realized that the UK does not have the glowing hearts around it as I had pictured. It has its quirks and flaws — but I still love it.

When I first got here and felt frustrated about life in the UK, I would remember being a child and seeing a double-decker bus — a symbol of the UK from an international perspective.

I'd look at it intently and think, "This is the magic of the UK. This is where I wanted to be."

I plan to stay in the UK to further my studies

In September, I will start my Ph.D. in Classics at King's College London.

Although I used to think that I'd stay in the UK, I've recently started to think about how my family members are getting old.

I miss my family. I call and text them all the time, and my parents come to visit every so often. As a student, I've had the flexibility to go home around the December holidays. Sometimes, I don't even realize how long it's been since I've seen them in person.

I have four more years in the UK to complete my Ph.D, and I know the US will always be there for me. So, I'm open to returning at some point.

Do you have a story about choosing to attend college outside the US that you want to share? Get in touch with the reporter, Erin: [email protected] .

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Is India a Safe Place for Women? Another Brutal Killing Raises the Question.

The rape and murder of a trainee doctor at her own hospital has brought up, once again, uncomfortable truths about a country that wants to be a global leader.

By Anupreeta Das and Sameer Yasir

In December 2012, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student boarded a bus in New Delhi a little after 9 p.m., expecting it would take her home. Instead, she was gang-raped and assaulted so viciously with an iron rod that her intestines were damaged. She died days later as India erupted in rage.

Nearly 12 years later, the nation is convulsing with anger once again — this time, over the ghastly rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor in a Kolkata hospital, as she rested in a seminar room after a late-night shift. Since the Aug. 9 killing, thousands of doctors have gone on strike to demand a safer work environment and thousands more people have taken to the streets to demand justice.

For a country desperate to be seen as a global leader, repeated high-profile cases of brutal sexual assaults highlight an uncomfortable truth: India, by many measures , remains one of the world’s most unsafe places for women. Rape and domestic violence are relatively common, and conviction rates are low.

This week, the Supreme Court of India took up the Kolkata case as one of fundamental rights and safety, questioning how hospital administrators and police officers had handled it and saying new protective measures were needed. “The nation cannot wait for another rape and murder for real changes on the ground,” Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said.

Gender-related violence is hardly unique to India. But even as millions of Indian women have joined the urban work force in the past decade, securing their financial independence and helping to fuel the country’s rapid growth, they are still often left to bear the burden of their own safety.

Longstanding customs that both repress women and in many cases confine them to the home have made their safety in public spaces an afterthought. It can be dangerous for a woman to use public transportation, especially at night, and sexual harassment occurs frequently on the streets and in offices. Mothers tell their daughters to be watchful. Brothers and husbands drop their sisters and wives off at work.

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