Lately, I’ve found myself thinking about getting old more and more often. Probably, this is related to my Mom’s recent birthday, but likely also to my own transitioning through the somewhat arbitrarily-defined middle age. I certainly notice more discussions of the coming-to-terms-with-your-own-approaching-death – kind of musings in what I read (outside of work, naturally; my work-related reading could indeed bore an unprepared reader to death, but that would be just an unfortunate side effect of my research area).
I’ve just finished listening to an audiobook called “Happy” by Derren Brown. It is another modern take on the Stoic philosophy, and has an insightful section related to our (human’s, in general) relationship with the older generation throughout our lives. At any point in our lives, we generally view the old people as un-cool and implicitly think and act as if we would not be like them in a similar situation. More generally, we think in terms of “us vs. them” towards the old, even though, ironically, we will almost definitely be old ourselves (that is, if we a lucky and healthy enough to live to the old age, of course).
A line of thought that I found helpful in that regard goes like this: consider that we’ve been aging since the day of our birth and that, generally speaking, in the majority of cases, it has been a positive experience – we gradually became more capable intellectually and also developed individual character. So it probably wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume, that we will continue refining our individuality and intellectual capacity, at least up to a certain point.
Here is another neat mental exercise that I consider a worthwhile takeaway from the book. It is generally easy to imaging telling ourselves: “If I had a chance to talk to my younger self, I’d give them this advice:..” It should be possible, therefore, to a forward-projecting version of this thought experiment: “If my older self would have a chance to talk to me right now, what advice would they gave me?” Granted the hindsight is clearer than forward-seeing, but some insight could still be gained.