Becoming Irrelevant and Obsolete in Old Age — NOT!
Many books available in brick-and-mortar bookstores and on the internet are dedicated to being successful in life. The shelves are packed with titles like Rich Dad Poor Dad and 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. But there is no book section designated “How to Manage your Decline Towards Irrelevant Old Person.”
Some research indicates that, on average, success and productivity increase for the first 20 years after the beginning of a career. So, if you start your career in earnest at, say, age 30, you can expect to do your best work at about age 50 — and then go into mental decline soon after that. To this, I say rubbish.
Other research says that the likelihood of a major accomplishment in your career increases steadily through your 20s and 30s and then declines through your 40s, 50s, and 60s. The most common age for producing a significant work or accomplishment is in your late 30s. And the likelihood of achieving a major feat at age 70 is about what it was at age 20 — almost nonexistent. Again, I say rubbish because obviously, there are many exceptions to such broad generalizations.
In America, as we age, it is sad to acknowledge that we are often viewed differently — or not at all. As we age, it seems we are increasingly undervalued and dismissed by society as being irrelevant and obsolete. Many of us begin to feel unappreciated both internally and externally. Many people realize later in life that they have tied their entire self-worth to the titles they once held in their accomplished careers. It’s important to recognize that later in life when you let go of all your life ‘titles,’ you must find a different ‘I am.’ Simply saying, “Now, I am retired.” — well, that’s not really a new life path.
Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence
“We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom.” — E.O. Wilson
In the early 1940s, British psychologist Raymond Cattell introduced the concepts of fluid and crystallized intelligence. Cattell defined fluid intelligence as the ability to reason, analyze, and solve different problems — what we think of as pure intellectual horsepower. Innovators and visionaries typically have an abundance of fluid intelligence. It is highest relatively early in adulthood and diminishes starting in one’s 30s and 40s.
Crystallized intelligence, by contrast, is the ability to use the information gained in the past. Think of it as owning a vast library of knowledge and understanding how to access and use it. It is the essence of wisdom. Because crystallized intelligence relies on an accumulating stockpile of knowledge, it tends to expand beginning in one’s 40s and does not diminish until very late in life.
Accumulating wisdom is a lifetime project. No aspect of IQ equates with mature ‘knowing’ — you must live life to acquire such understanding. Older people may underperform on tests of memory and IQ compared with younger people. But in areas of lifetime experience, they can outperform in stellar fashion.
Careers that rely primarily on fluid intelligence tend to peak early, while those that use more crystallized intelligence peak later. Teaching, for example, is an ability that can extend into late life. Those who best assemble and explain complicated concepts in a sage-like manner are often in their mid-60s or older — some of them well into their 80s. Given their warehouse of wisdom, it seems correct that older people can be the most successful teachers and mentors. So, no matter our profession, we all can dedicate ourselves (if we so choose) to sharing wisdom in some meaningful way as we advance into late life. Irrelevant and obsolete in old age? — NOT!
The Ashramas
Ancient Hindu teaching about the stages of life, or ashramas, consists of four phases.
The first phase is Brahmacharya, the period of youth and young adulthood dedicated to learning.
The second phase is Grihastha, when a person builds a career, accumulates wealth, and creates a family.
The third phase is Vanaprastha, whose name comes from two Sanskrit words meaning “retiring” and “into the forest.” This is the phase, usually later in life, in which we purposefully focus less on professional ambition and become more devoted to spirituality, service, and wisdom.
Sannyasa, which means complete renunciation, is the last stage of life and is dedicated entirely to the fruits of enlightenment.
Taking a New Higher Road
In 2023, I will reach the age of 70. Chronologically and statistically, that would put me roughly in the mid-winter of my life. Yet, based on the quality of my health and a substantial reserve of energy (both physical and mental), I would place my biological age more in the late summer of life. Say Fiftyish.
I am not world-famous by any measure. But I have traveled the globe extensively, and my professional life has gone well. As a self-employed entrepreneur for over forty years, I enjoyed success and recognition in my career spanning construction management, real estate development, and finance.
I admit that my foot was on the gas pedal from early adulthood to middle age — professionally and socially. I lived and succeeded by my fluid intelligence (described above). I was in hot pursuit of the materialistic rewards of success — and I attained many of them. And I was attached to them, thinking that they were the reason for my happiness.
HOWEVER, as I reached age 60, I wondered: Can I keep this up? Was my enthusiasm still as strong for what I excelled at? Was it still the passion it once was? Was it still necessary to strive for worldly rewards — power, fame, status, money, material possessions? Or should I begin to detach from such selfish wants and desires? And search instead for a higher road.
Even if I stayed in my career as a part-time gig, my work output would probably slow and stop at some point. And when it did, what then? Was there anything I could do to give myself a shot at avoiding late-life despair from feeling obsolete and irrelevant? Maybe I could even find a way to achieve a more fulfilling type of peace and contentment.
I was fortunate to have the means and opportunity to walk away from a career in my early sixties. But, as the wisdom of Hindu teachings and the knowledge of many philosophical traditions suggest, maybe I should have prepared to walk away from these worldly rewards at an earlier point in life. At the height of my professional prestige in my late forties, maybe I should have scaled back my career ambitions so as to ramp up my spiritual ones. I finally got around to it in earnest sometime after sixty.
So, for the past several years, I have been on a quest for knowledge and a search for the path that would best connect me to my higher self. I decided to pursue my new direction as an open-minded realist, explorer, questioner, overthinker, and sensitive individualist.
Interestingly, ‘the more I realized how much I knew, the more I realized how much more I must know.’ By acknowledging our growing reservoir of knowledge and wisdom as we age, we open ourselves to the grand possibility of transcendence and enlightenment.
Enlightenment is a feeling of being in balance and at peace with yourself and the world and the Universe. It’s about discovering a new reality and acting on it. It’s about noticing things that are not right and helping to change them. It’s about caring for others as much as you care about yourself. It’s about finding your inner power and the courage to get involved, becoming part of the solution rather than adding to the problem.
We do much damage to ourselves by not being patient with our life evolution — which, by design and necessity, means luxuriating in an abundance of various plots, twists, and outcomes.
Great fanfare usually attends the moment of inspiration — the ‘aha,’ the ‘eureka.’ There is little notice, however, of the typically lengthy period that precedes it — the period that involves observation, meditation, experiment, uncertainty, frustration, fits and starts. We lose track of time spent asking the questions repeatedly, sleeping on it, and pitching in our sleep. We worship the flower and ignore all the soil nutrients that helped create it. We covet the diamond and overlook the incredible pressure and time needed to forge it.
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If you enjoyed this article, you might like my series of six self-published books designed to present ‘some of what I know so far’ on a wide range of interesting subjects, including human evolution, spirituality, politics, religion, finance, nature, science, ancient anomalies, the cosmos and so much more.
My books can be found on Amazon Books by searching “books by Stephen Geist.”
Each of the six books has relevance to the other books but reading them in order is unnecessary. Each book can stand alone but reading all six books in the series would be better. Maybe you will awaken to a new state of ‘being,’ as I have — one that is both breathtaking and startling.
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