I’m old, and that’s just fine
I’m almost 63 years old. I tell people that makes me old.
People generally react to that by saying with some enthusiasm, “That’s not old!” if they’re younger than me, and with some cynicism, “That’s not old!” if they’re older than me.
I’m healthy for my age. My cholesterol level is (at the high end of) normal, my blood pressure and weight are good, and my hearing and brain are working very well. But my thyroid is messed up, my vision is deteriorating, my knees are shot, my prostate is bigger than it used to be, I have mild sciatica, I’m starting to lose muscle mass, and my back hurts if I stay in the same posture for very long.
Regardless of my present health, I don’t expect to live past 90 years. Not only do I have one foot in the grave, but my centre of mass is decidedly over the grave’s edge, and it won’t be long before my other foot lifts off terra viventium once and for all.
I made my peace with that a long time ago. That makes me one of the lucky ones, because I can focus what time I have left enjoying the life I’ve built instead of constantly trying to renovate it.
I know many people my age. Few of them have accepted their mortality and even fewer have learned anything substantive from their lives.
If you think you’re detecting a bit of sanctimony in my words, or that I’m implying that I know some magic truth, then you’re mistaken. I have no idea what other people have learned from their lives. I just know they haven’t learned much, because they still act like they’re half their age.
I’m not referring to the learning of some specific bit of wisdom. Nor am I referring to “book learning”.
What I’m talking about is having learned from having lived. Real learning, valuable learning, will change how you think. It may come from a formal education, but I think it’s more likely to come from… well,… everywhere else. When you change how you think, you change how you act. You may not even realize you’ve learned anything except in recognizing that you act differently than you used to.
I act differently now than I did, say, 30 years ago. It’s not a light-switch that got toggled. It’s like a mental dimmer switch that has gradually brightened over time as my body has started to dim.
Aging and learning are sneaky things. The changes (usually) creep up on you so slowly that you have to pay close attention to notice them. And the impositions of society are so much louder and more intrusive now, that what your body and mind are telling you is almost completely drowned out. So while your mental dimmer switch will brighten slowly with time, the realization that you can see yourself and the world better comes on much faster. One day you just realize you’re not the same person, even though the changes took lots of time to run their course.
It takes effort to be aware of yourself. It can take decades of effort to recognize the changes that have been happening over one’s adulthood. As Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living".
Self-reflection creates a mental feedback loop: reflection will change how you think, which will change the way you reflect. The feedback can lead to more and more substantive revelations about your life, your environment, and your self.
Not many, in my experience, are willing (or able) to invest that effort.
Those who can’t, often because their lot in life just prevents them from having the time and energy for it, deserve our compassion. One important reason to seek a more just society is to help ensure that future generations will have the time and energy to reflect on their own lives.
Those who won’t — well, they deserve scorn and derision, because they’re wasting one of the most valuable resources a human has: their selves.
I think old age is a time of synthesis. You never stop learning, of course, but you also start putting things together. You see a bigger picture and richer patterns. It’s in that synthesis that wisdom can form.
There’s nothing magical or spiritual going on here. The human brain works in a certain way and at a certain speed. You can’t force it to go any faster, no matter what the “success gurus” and influencers say. That’s why wisdom is something so commonly linked with age. And the brain needs raw materials to work with, so that’s why wisdom seems tied to both presence in the moment and variety of experience.
The wisdom of age grants the aged a sense of their place in reality; they find where they really belong. This provides a sense of security that satisfies our need for safety. Safety is an aspect of self-preservation, which is one of the oldest instincts in any organism.
And that sense of place and contentment, that sense of attachment to reality, can be a tremendous comfort as we approach death.
The unavoidable “tragedy” of it is that wisdom really can’t be transferred to others because it’s such a personal thing. Sure we oldsters can write stuff down for posterity, and orate at length on all the valuable lessons we sincerely wish to pass on for the benefit of others. But it all turns into a bunch of aphorisms, apocrypha, and “rules” that apply at best only some of the time and to some of the people.
What we can try to do, though, is to help young people learn how to think so that they will someday gain their own wisdom without making quite as many mistakes as we did.
Unfortunately, education in North America (and several other regions) seems to be taking a rather massive hit with respect to helping students learn how to think rationally and critically.
Notions of objective fact are getting inexcusably conflated with subjective experience. Vague opinions, no matter how irrational or unfounded, are becoming as important as robust and precise evidence. Effort is becoming optional. The distinction between means and ends is disappearing. Failure is becoming a social taboo rather than a natural and important part of learning and growth. Being loud and repetitive is now considered “expertise”.
All these things undermine one’s ability to think rationally and critically. And without that, one only learns useless garbage.
Education is the single greatest thing we can provide to people to help ensure a sustainable, successful future society. But it needs to be a good education; not one rife with political grandstanding and ideological nonsense. It needs to clearly distinguish between objective and subjective realities, and to recognize that the only way to learn about objective reality is through critical thinking and science. Subjective reality, though equally important, is both grounded in objective reality and highly mutable. Without understanding objective reality, you can’t appreciate anyone’s subjective reality — including your own!
And I don’t just mean schooling here, though there are some skills that really are best learned in some kind of school setting. Education can happen on the job, while doing voluntary work, on the sports field, or while walking in the forest.
A digression on education now would be out-of-scope of this post, so I’ll defer it to another time.
But I will say this: here’s something I’ve learned about education that was never taught to me (much to the shame of the excellent schools I attended), but that I think is the single greatest lack in today’s system: the learning loop is rarely closed properly. Learning is an iterative closed loop of observation, reflection, articulation, and assessment. Going around that loop once isn’t good enough. And that’s where education falls flat on its ass.
I doubt I’ll be able to bring about any substantial change now. I almost regret that. Almost.
Instead, I’ll settle for writing about it, here and in other places, once I’m finally free of working for a salary (21,445 hours left as of this writing). Maybe I’ll be able to influence a few people in a good way.
And that’d be good enough of a legacy for me.
