Given the fact that I find myself getting a little older just about every day, I’m always on the lookout for something that passes for good news about aging. This week I came across a story about a study that was conducted recently at the Duke University Medical Center that might, depending on your interpretation of the results, qualify as a blessing of advancing age.
The study had some older folks (average age 70) and some younger folks (average age 24) look at some photographs, some of which had disturbing images. Later they hooked the test subjects up to brain monitors and asked them to recall the unpleasant images.
They found that when the young people brought the negative images to mind the emotional center in their brain was very active, but the older folks used the frontal cortex (where the higher level reasoning and problem solving occurs) to recall the same images. So the researchers concluded that a younger brain tends to react more strongly on an emotional level to negative experiences than a more mature brain. But why would that be the case?
The study hasn’t provided an answer to that question as yet, but I have a few theories based on my own life experiences. I can think of two reasons why a person gets less worked up about the bad things in life as they get older: experience and perspective.
To be young is to constantly find novelty in life. The first time you get your heart broken, or get fired from a job, or face the death or serious illness of a loved one, it is an earth-shaking experience. After these things happen once, twice, then three times, the earth shakes a little less each time it happens. By the time a person reaches their 70s, a number of bad things have happened to them and it simply doesn’t rock their world like it did when they were younger.
Another reason we may get less and less emotional about adversity as we get older is an evolving perspective about what is important in life. To a young person aging and death are far-away, almost unreal concepts. But to a person over 70, mortality has become a familiar companion who has made his presence well-known in your consciousness.
How does that affect your reaction to life’s little tragedies? Well, once you realize that aging and death actually apply to you, many of the things that once seemed like serious problems tend to lose their emotional punch. You begin to really understand the import of the old “what difference will this really make when I’m dead and gone?” line of thinking.
A mature person realizes that there are a very few things in life worth getting upset about. The death or serious illness of a close friend. A major terrorist attack in your home country. Your house burning down. Those are real problems worth shedding tears over. But how many of those things are likely to happen to you in a typical day?
So your car won’t start, or someone made a snarky comment at your expense, or you’re having a bad hair day. If you’re 25, any of those things might be enough to put you in a bad mood. If you’re 75, you are probably thankful that you lived to see today, and you aren’t about to let some minor inconvenience spoil your appreciation of this fragile gift of life that has been bestowed on us.
It’s called wisdom, and it’s generally something that can only be purchased with time. Still, even young people might want to keep in mind that time worrying is usually time wasted. And trust me - you don’t have as much time as you think you do.
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