Yes and no, says Garfinkel, who heads Gerontology Service, a consulting practice for institutions that deal with the elderly. She finds that we associate aging with dysfunction. A young person in poor health tends to report feeling old, while an old person in good health feels young and active. "It's a two-way street," says Garfinkel. "If you aren't in good health, it's very hard to think young. But if you think young, have good genes, and take care of yourself, you'll probably feel and seem younger than you are."
Believing yourself to be in better than normal condition for your age is typical for healthy people in general. It's not that we're deluding ourselves, it's simply that the interplay of chronological age and physical health is much stronger than we tend to realize. That's why the following statistical impossibility can exist: According to "The Wrinkle Report," a national survey of more than 1,200 people ages 30 to 50, three in four baby boomers think they look younger than their actual years, and eight in ten say they have fewer signs of facial aging than other people their age. "People in their forties and those in their eighties actually say quite similar things," Garfinkel reports. "It's more an indication of physical health than of anything else. If we don't feel bad, we feel great. We're a little bit like the people in Lake Woebegon, whose children are all above average."
AM I OLD YET?
People tend not to feel downright old, no matter what their age. They just get more and more surprised when they look in the mirror and see the ways in which. they're changing physically The fact is that aging tends to be subtle and most losses come hand in hand with small, new rewards. For example, one's first gray hairs may arrive around the same time one earns a major promotion--somehow the equation of loss and gain nets out in a surprisingly satisfying manner. In some way, we continue to expect that the next milestone will be the one that makes us suddenly feel old.
I'm reminded of a birthday luncheon I went to recently for a friend who's just rounded the hump of thirty Call her Sally Sally had anticipated the event with a great deal of fear and anxiety, and was surprised at how little change the actual big day had wrought. I mentioned that I'd felt very few negative changes during my thirties, and said that I felt surer of myself and much happier than I'd been in my twenties. Then Kim, our 43-year-old friend, smiled broadly at both of us and said that the thirties were a wonderful decade. We continued eating for a moment. After a bit, Sally turned to me and said, "How old are you again? Thirty-eight?"
"Thirty-seven," I snapped. Kim's smile drooped--to her, my quick reaction meant that though I was happy to be getting older, I didn't want to be as old as she was. In fact, she's right. I'm enjoying each year far more than I might have imagined possible as a teenager, but that doesn't mean I want my life to pass any more quickly. As much as I like my thirties, I'm not giving up a single year before it's time.
Paradoxically, I do know that, on most levels, the future looks promising. Given all the fear we seem to have of it, the wondrous news is that getting older is a generally positive thing. We don't just accumulate years, we also gain wisdom which enables us to make decisions with less of the fussing and wheel-spinning that marked our teens and twenties. "I often think the excess energy of youth is nature's way of compensating for a lack of wisdom," says Garfinkel. "All that zip means you don't collapse from all the work of chasing your own tail."
As we get older, we know more not only about the world but about ourselves. We have better attention spans and an increased ability to focus. "In general, most non-neurotic older people are content with what they've done with their lives, are happy, have high self-esteem, and a sense of well-being," says clinical psychologist Forrest Scogin, Ph.D., of the University of Alabama. "We become more adaptable and flexible, and have a greater understanding of our own resilience."
Conventional thinking has always emphasized the miserable, crotchety older person, Scogin adds, but in fact unhappiness is far from the norm. Rates of depression tend to decline after the age of 45, for both men and women. (There's a slight--but temporary--blip in men's rates around the time of retirement.) Other research shows that our sense of what we deem most important for happiness tends to alter appropriately as we age, a sign of the true resilience of the human spirit: We may not look as fresh-faced, but we like ourselves more. We actually think fewer negative thoughts. Life becomes simpler.
Our priorities shift in a healthy and adaptive fashion. "We care less about our appearance and more about our emotional well-being, our character, and our involvements in the world at large and with those we love," says clinical psychologist Betsy Stone, Ph.D., of Stamford, Connecticut.
One other rosy aspect to the future is that as physical attributes become a little less stunning, sex roles begin to blur. Men become more accommodating and emotionally expressive; women more assertive and active in meeting their own needs. With a little less passion, a little less division of roles, and an increase in contentment and openness with one another, relationships in later life tend to become far more important, satisfying, and mutual.
Tags:
aging bodies,
bronzers,
collagen injections,
feminine products,
forties,
fountain of youth,
inevitable path,
laugh lines,
mass hysteria,
roper starch,
sagging skin,
skin crawl,
thirties,
timeto,
worldwide survey,
wrinkle creams,
youthful appearance
