David Chang
I write about podcasts and host the podcast “What Just Happened?” on Podcastenthusiast.com. Twitter: @davidgchang FB: https://www.facebook.com/davidchang99
WHAT I’M READING
The Wisdom of the Aged
After nearly a year of answering questions, John Sorensen posed one of his own: "Do you know what you want to do when…www.nytimes.com
After nearly a year of answering questions, John Sorensen posed one of his own: "Do you know what you want to do when…www.nytimes.com
In surveys of people in nursing homes and hospices, Dr. Ardelt found that wisdom was positively related to their sense of well-being, even after the researchers controlled for factors like physical health, financial status and social engagement. The frailer or closer to death people became, the greater the role wisdom played in their feelings of well-being. Wisdom may not necessarily increase with old age — other researchers have found that it does not — but it becomes more central to people’s lives as they age, and compensates for much of the decline.
The good news is that this extended period is better than young people think, Dr. Carstensen said. Levels of gratitude, forgiveness, calm and appreciation all rise through midlife to a peak around age 70, and remain relatively high through later years, she said. Anger and stress, on the other hand, recede.
“The older people get, the more positive they are about aging and the more adaptive they are to their limitations,” Dr. Carstensen said. “Social science tends to define old people by their disabilities. But people don’t define themselves that way.”