Your Mind Has Plenty Of Time Left
Hugh Downs, the veteran newsman and popular co-host of the TV show “20/20,” is one of many who find scholarship to be a most satisfying pursuit of late middle age. Downs has always been fascinated by medicine; when he reached his mid-60s, he plunged into a post-master’s degree program in gerontology and earned his degree while working full time.
Most researchers agree that no functional mental decline occurs before 60 or 65. Short-term memory, however, can become somewhat less reliable. What is vulnerable to wear and tear with age is the brain’s “hardware” - the billions of telephone line-like connections and relay switches that transmit messages from one brain cell to another, as described by U.S. News & World Report. But some neurologists now believe that we shouldn’t concede even this aspect of brainpower to aging. We may be able to boot up the brain’s memory with psychoactive drugs that mimic the memory hormones that decline with age.
“The whole idea that older people don’t learn as well is pure nonsense,” Downs scoffed. “Maybe split-second brain functions slow down after about age 48, but we’re talking about microseconds that you wouldn’t even notice in a conversation. Mental computation speed is more than offset by acquired techniques, accumulated wisdom and focus.” He chuckled, recalling the antsiness of his 20s, the million-and-one insecurities and distractions that punctuate our attention spans when we’re younger. “My concentration has actually improved,” said Downs.
The paramount concern of the 60s is: “What will my life add up to? Is it too late to put more meaning into my life before I’m old? Do I want to be remembered only for this?”
As we draw toward the end of the Age of Mastery in the early 60s, the shadow of late age begins to fall across our path. But it opens up another uncharted and deeply meaningful passage, this one to the illumination (or despair) of the Age of Integrity. Despair is easy to define: a surrender to the conviction that time is too short to start another life or try out alternative paths to integrity.
But what does integrity really mean? I think of integrity as the work of integration. One of the overarching desires often articulated by men and women I have interviewed in late middle age is for balance - being able to bring all the parts of one’s life into harmony. The need becomes pressing for an emotional integration of all the different roles and the serial identities that have served us through adolescence and middlescence. It is time for “coalescence.” What is the essence of ourselves that we want to leave behind?
“I don’t know how to put this,” one architect told me, “but you don’t want to feel any part of your life is unauthentic.”
The search for your own authenticity - the core self that embodies the values and loyalties for which you stand - begins earlier in Second Adulthood, when the false self is first confronted. Much that is false about yourself, tailored to please others, will already have been sloughed off if you are still developing. What is different about reaching for your own truth in the 60s is that nobody can dictate to you anymore. And there is nobody really to blame. You own your own integrity - or despair - as inescapably as the face that looks back at you from the mirror every morning.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Gail Sheehy Universal Press Syndicate