How Does Life Feel Different At 70
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I turned 70 years old a few days ago. While I don’t feel old, take no prescription medications, eat a plant-based diet, work out at the gym, and walk 6 to 8 miles almost daily… there is still something about turning 70 that freaks me out. I feel like I’m about 40 on the inside, but that’s not what my birth certificate shows. It is just hard to believe that you were a kid or teenager and then, seemingly in an instant, are a senior citizen.
My son asked me how it feels differently being older as opposed to being younger. First of all, many things haven’t changed being 70 as compared to being 30 or 40—you were born in the same city at the same time to the same parents; you are about the same height and weight, have roughly the same psychological makeup, many of the same memories, the same DNA, etc. (This relates to what philosophers call the problem of personal identity. What, if anything, is it about you that endures over time? Are you more similar or different from who you used to be?)
As for the differences between being, say 30, as opposed to being 70, I’d classify them as follows.
The Physical – You are not as fast or strong as you used to be. My 12-year-old granddaughter can easily beat me in a race, and my 7 and 8-year-old grandchildren would give me a good run for my money. I can’t throw or hit or kick a ball as far or as high as I used to. I don’t hear or see or sleep as well.
The Cognitive – I have much more crystallized intelligence but much poorer fluid intelligence. Roughly, crystallized intelligence is the ability to use skills, knowledge, and experience; it is one’s lifetime of intellectual achievement, as demonstrated largely through one’s vocabulary and general knowledge. This improves somewhat with age, as experiences expand one’s knowledge.
Fluid intelligence or fluid reasoning is the capacity to reason and solve novel problems, independent of any knowledge from the past. It is the ability to analyze novel problems, identify patterns and relationships that underpin these problems and the extrapolation of these using logic. Fluid reasoning includes inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. My fluid intelligence has decreased.
Let me give you an example. When my wife and I watch the TV game show Jeopardy, I realize I have a vast storehouse of knowledge after 70 years. But usually, I can’t answer the questions quickly enough, even when I know the answer. And I often find now that I have trouble accessing words or names that I know well. To take another example, when I taught college classes in my thirties, I had much less background information about my subject but could think quickly in class in a way I couldn’t do in my sixties.
The Psychological – Again, there are many similarities. I have many of the same character flaws—for instance, I’m still obsessive compulsive—but I’m still intellectually curious too. I hate to admit it, but much of our psychological tendencies seem hardwired. Not that we can’t change, but genes and environment wire our brains making drastic change difficult.
Summary -So I have declined intellectually somewhat, physically a lot, and psychologically I haven’t changed all that much. Nothing very profound here.
How You Are Viewed By Younger People – I sense that some younger people see me as old (in a negative way.) No doubt some of this is projection. Still, you become aware that others see you as older than you feel. You may be physically and intellectually vibrant, but your external appearance belies those facts. It is hard to get used to being older than most others you meet daily. But no sour grapes, that’s just (currently) part of the cycle of life and the elixer is to be, to use a cliche, young at heart.
The Real Difference – Life just looks different. You become increasingly aware of your mortality. You can easily imagine your kids and grandkids reading these lines, wondering if you knew the end was getting nearer. And the answer is yes. You know that much of your life is not on the horizon but behind you. Much of the journey is over. This thought fills you with pride in what you’ve achieved and sadness for what can never be. It is a strange thing to be human, and no words effectively communicate what it’s like. Here you are, one consciousness, seemingly destined to vanish. But then again, hopefully, others will take up where we left off and bring about a better future.
The Good News – You worry less about unimportant things like your appearance or what others think about you. (The old joke is that when I was 20, I worried what others thought about me; when I was 50, I quit worrying so much what others thought about me; and when I was 70, I realized nobody was thinking about me anyway.)
Conclusion – How then should we feel about turning 70 or 80 or 90 or 100? 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.
