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The Art of Aging Gracefully
Experts say the keys to successful aging include
accepting changes and finding meaningful activities
By Katherine Kam
WebMD Feature
In
Nora Ephron's best-selling book, I Feel Bad
About My Neck, she
laments the sorry state of her 60-something neck:
"Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth. You
have to cut open a redwood tree to see how old it
is, but you wouldn't have to if it had a neck," she
writes.
"Every so often I read a book about age, and
whoever's writing it says it's great to be old. It's
great to be wise and sage and mellow; it's great to
be at the point where you understand just what
matters in life. I can't stand people who say things
like this. What can they be thinking? Don't they
have necks?"
With
rueful humor, she writes about smoothing her face
with Restylane and Botox, reading in large type, and
grieving the deaths of beloved friends.
Ultimately, Ephron concludes, "The honest truth is
that it's sad to be over sixty."
Yes,
getting older is rife with emotional landmines,
gerontologists say, including fears of losing one's
independence or getting a serious illness. Aging
gracefully isn't always easy, but attitude matters a
lot, experts say.
"For
some reason, our society is very obsessed with
pointing out negative aspects of aging," says Susan
Whitbourne, PhD, professor of psychology at the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is also
the past president of the American Psychological
Association's Division on Aging.
But
Whitbourne cautions, "Don't get bogged down in all
the hype about aging. Once you start thinking about
it, it can drive you mad. There's nothing you can
do; the clock is going to tick away."
Happy Camper
Of
course, not all seniors are pessimistic. Some, such
as Kirt Spradlin, don't care a whit about what their
necks look like.
The
great-grandfather is one of those vigorous and
optimistic elders who astounds his peers. Naturally,
he tires more easily and has to take things slower,
he says. But having battled prostate cancer, the
California man relishes every single month that life
affords him. When asked his age, he proudly replies,
"79 and a half."
The
former electrical engineer took up a new hobby after
retirement: mountain climbing. He has climbed Mount
Whitney and Kilimanjaro and trekked to Mount
Everest's base camp. Just last year, he and wife
Donna went on a weeklong backpacking trip -- just
the two of them alone in the wilderness. Donna is
80.
"People think we're nuts," he says. But for him,
aging with a crappy attitude is simply out of the
question.
The
Spradlins have grown old with astonishing grace and
acceptance. But depression is a real threat among
the old; some drift into isolation, bitterness, and
a sense of meaninglessness. Still others put up
their dukes, determined to go down swinging.
Face-lifts and tummy tucks? Bring it on.
Experts who have worked with thousands of seniors
share their insights into how you can navigate
emotional challenges in order to age gracefully.
The Old Are Survivors
It's
true that aging brings hardships, but remember that
the old are survivors -- a select group.
Wisdom, resilience and a mature perspective are
often cited as the hard-won prizes of aging. But
growing old itself is an accomplishment.
"But
if you get to be older, you have survived a lot of
the threats to your physical and psychological
integrity that have affected other people who are no
longer around," psychologist Whitbourne says.
Through good luck or good genes or both, the old
have dodged fatal accidents, premature disease, and
other things that kill the young. "You are stronger,
and you get to live longer," she says. "Most people
think that's a benefit."
A
dose of healthy denial can improve outlook in one's
later years, she adds. "The people who do the best
with aging aren't thinking that much about getting
older. They're not really focusing on what's not
working anymore. If you sit around mulling over the
meaning of existence and how time is running out,
you're building in a scenario where you're not going
to age as successfully."
Accepting Changes
Accept the inevitable changes of aging, rather than
seeing them as aberrant crises.
During the course of his career, Illinois
psychologist Mark Frazier, PsyD, has worked with
thousands of older people "ages 65 to 105," he says.
Again and again, he's seen an important key to
psychological health: accepting that your life won't
stay the same. Aging changes everyone.
"If
you live until you're 95 years old, you're probably
not going to be living alone in a beautiful
apartment and driving your car to the grocery store
and picking up your dry cleaning and walking a mile
to the park. But if you know that ahead of time,
it's much easier to manage it," he says.
"To
age gracefully, one needs to anticipate the changes
that are inevitable," Frazier says. "People who
think rigidly do not do that. As they encounter the
natural changes and health status that are part of
aging, these things are experienced as negative and
adding a lot of stress and strain to their life.
Rigid thinkers tend to get overwhelmed. They can't
manage it, and they get depressed."
"Other people anticipate what's going to happen," he
says. "It's more of a 'Yes, I knew this was coming
and I know that I'll negotiate my way through it.'"
Avoiding Stereotypes
Get
over your own stereotypes about growing older.
Sue
Ellen Cooper, 62, understands Ephron's dirge about
"compensatory dressing" and obligatory hair dye.
"It's not disgraceful to mourn the loss of your
beauty," Cooper says.
"But
it's going. So you may as well do what you can and
then forget it because there's so much more to life
than how you look and what other people think of
you."
Almost a decade ago, Cooper started the Red Hat
Society to celebrate women 50 and over. Red Hat now
boasts 40,000 chapters in the U.S. and abroad. Most
members wear red hats and purple dresses to the
group's social outings.
But
Cooper admits that when she was younger, she
harbored prejudice against older people. "When I
would meet people, I'd think, "She probably wouldn't
be a potential friend for me because she's 20 years
older -- just these things where we make a
split-second judgment on appearance."
Having met thousands of older women through the Red
Hat Society, she has replaced the stereotypical
thinking with a positive view of aging gracefully.
"First impression doesn't tell you a thing. Some of
these people have had incredible lives and careers
and still have a great sense of humor and a lot of
intellect, and the culture will write them off: 'Oh,
she's an old lady and she's overweight.'"
"OK,
world, here we are: 'old women,'" Cooper says
defiantly. "We're about gathering women together as
they get older and having that companionship and
friendship that makes it less scary for women in
this culture. We're still cool."
Finding Meaningful Activities
Continue to find meaning later in life.
"Retirement has always been a time when we see
people withdraw from their roles," says Pauline
Abbott, EdD, director of gerontology at the
Institute of Gerontology, California State
University, Fullerton. During this risky time, some
older people succumb to depression and a sense of
meaninglessness.
"Part of the challenge of aging gracefully is that
you have to continue to find things that are
important to you," Frazier says.
That
can include travel, spiritual pursuits, hobbies, new
social groups, lifelong learning, or recapturing
time with family if one lacked the chance during the
career years, experts say.
Plan
for purposeful activities before you retire, Abbott
says. "It should be a transition. It shouldn't be,
'Stop work one day and fall off a cliff.' It's time
to follow where your passions lie."
Without meaningful goals, "You get into this whole
attitude of 'Oh, my gosh -- woes me. My memory's
going, I'm slow, all I do is go to wakes and
funerals,'" Frazier says.
"If
you don't have important things out in front of you,
there's enough about the aging process that is not
positive and you can get caught up in what you don't
like about it."
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Quote: |
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"Don't get bogged down in all the hype about
aging. Once you start thinking about it, it can
drive you mad. There's nothing you can do; the
clock is going to tick away."
Susan Whitbourne, PhD
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