SENIORS

Seniors are speaking.

Giving lots of advice to us underclassmen. 

 

A chance encounter with a ninety-year-old woman led Karl Pillemer, a professor/gerontologist at Cornell University to explore the secrets the elderly know about life- secrets that elude us kids. 

Pillemer's book, 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans features interviews from 1,000+ older Americans who comment on what they did right and wrong in their long lives, and share the wisdom that age and experience has gifted them.

 

New York Times health columnist Jane E. Brody summed up these words of wisdom in a recent column: Advice From Life’s Graying Edge on Finishing With No Regrets.  

On Marriage: Abiding friendship, ability to communicate, willingness to give and take, and commitment to the institution of marriage- as well as to each other- is the means  to success.

On Career: Be involved in a profession that you love, so you'll look forward to working every day.

On Parenting: Spend more time with your kids doing things they enjoy- even if you have to sacrifice to do so.

On Character: To avoid remorse later in life, always be honest.

On Experience: Travel early and often. Travel should take precedence over most things younger people spend their time and money on.

On Aging: It's an attitude and a process. Don't worry about it; prepare for and embrace it.  

On Happiness: It's a choice, not a result of how life treats you. A 75-year-old man declares: “You are not responsible for all the things that happen to you, but you are completely in control of your attitude and your reactions to them.” An 84-year-old urges, “Adopt a policy of being joyful.”

On Perspective:  Unable to do many of the things she once enjoyed, a 92-year-old says, “I think I’m happier now than I’ve ever been in my life. Things that were important to me are no longer important, or not as important.”

This advice hit the news along with cheery research presented in author Patricia Cohen's recent book In Our Prime: The Invention of Middle Age. Seems we underclassmen are smack-dab in the middle of the years that the seniors would most like to return to: our forties and fifties. 

Research suggests that while stress may reach a high point in middle age, individuals in their middle decades are the happiest. We're most confident in our abilities, most in control of our lives, and better able to juggle career and family. We have a sense of purpose, supportive social networks, and are more adept at handling disappointment, pettiness, and annoyance.  

Super mid-life bonus? Our judgment has reached a high point. And the combination of experience, insight, and ability often spurs our greatest creative productivity.  

Cohen states that profound genius is midlife’s territory. She references psychologists Carl Jung and Erik Erikson, who maintained that middle age propelled individuals toward their greatest achievements. She quotes English author G. K. Chesterton as saying: “Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.”

YAY US!

All of this great advice and news doesn't come as news to me. I've been blessed with many elderly relatives and friends who have been advising- and cautioning- me for years.

These articles strike a chord with me because I am smack-dab in middle age (I hope!) Like lots of people I know, I consistently fall short of heeding such great advice, or living as a poster child for all that positive research. Depending on the day, 'happiest' is interchangeable with 'moodiest'. The great inspiration that arrives may be crushed by the great exhaustion. The feeling that I am the most in control of my life is actually the understanding that I have relinquished most of the control in my life. 

Still, since I am mid-life-better at handling disappointment, onward I plod. I get it that this, (whatever this is) too, shall pass. I'll take a hit, and weeble-wobble back up for more, hoping I land on the right side of the research.

See, I owe my writing career to a woman who was living proof that the best can always be yet to come.

A lady who lived an extraordinary, stressful, often-times dangerous, and difficult life.

A writer who began her career in her mid-forties, but didn't publish her first novel until the tender age of 65. 

Her name is Laura Ingalls Wilder.

For a remarkably inspiring, productive decade-when she was 65-76 yrs of age-Laura wrote a series of children's novels based on her pioneer childhood. These novels have remained in print for eighty years, and have been translated into 40 different languages.

One of Laura's most famous quotes: "It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong."

Seniors are speaking.

Giving advice to us underclassmen. 

Take notes.  They've been sharing the very same words of wisdom for generations. 

QUING Hereby Decrees:  Life is High School. SENIORS RULE!