A Plug for the Golden Years

Dear George, 

I wonder when I first ran across the notion of “The Golden Years”.  Maybe sometime in my twenties.   From the outset it struck me as a lie, manufactured to delude old people into feeling better about the horrors of aging.  Recently I found out that the phrase was actually coined for a 1959 advertising campaign for Sun City, Arizona, the nation’s first large-scale retirement community.  So it was a sort of lie after all.

Now that I’m well into the Golden Years, I find myself reevaluating the matter.  I turned 82 last July, but the early eighties, so far, have no connection to the frightening fantasies I harbored as a young adult.  My life, like that of many of my age-peers, is similar to our earlier adult years, but also more desirable in a variety of ways.  My opinions about aging have been shaped a lot by my experience in OLLI classes at the university where most of my classmates are in their seventies and beyond.  These persons tend to be bright, inquisitive, engaged, and enthusiastic.  Nothing like ageist stereotypes.  While we all know that the final years of life can involve decline and disability, I’m more struck by the positives that are associated with growing older (associated with retirement as much as with biological age per se).  Here are some of the pluses that I associate with the Golden Years.    

Completion.  I think that one wonderful thing about the 70s and beyond is that one has completed (or largely completed) many of their major life tasks.  For myself, I feel good about growing up in our family, my education, my career, marriage, parenting, many friendships.  Along with a sense of accomplishment, I’m no longer troubled by the strains that necessarily came along with these largely completed life roles.  A mixture of pride, relief, and contentment. 

Freedom from authority.  For most of the past decades of my of life I, like just about everybody, was subject to the dictates of parents, teachers, bosses, and other authority figures.  With a couple of exceptions (e.g., my wife and my doctor), these hierarchical relationships pretty much ended upon my retirement at age 71.  No orders, no supervision, no annual reviews, no performance monitoring.  I sleep late when I want to, pick activities I find pleasurable.  I’m largely in charge of my daily routine and, with that, comes a rewarding sense of control that was less evident in earlier life stages.   

Lowered stress.  I spent my career teaching and doing research in social psychology.  It was a good choice from me, but each year that I’m away from the workplace, the more I’m aware of how stressful my work world was.  I found classroom teaching to be anxiety-provoking.  Pressures for research and publication were a constant source of stress.  Managing relationships with a few dozen colleagues was often rewarding, but could also be unpleasant.   One of my work friends took early retirement and was convinced that it reduced his blood pressure and added ten years to his life.  I know the feeling.  It’s not that retired life is stress-free, but many earlier sources of pressure have lessened or vanished.

Less self-consciousness.    I’ve always been a rather shy, socially anxious person, though my sense is that this has decreased with age.  At this stage of life I have less need to create favorable impressions and am less concerned with what others think of me.  My sister commented a while back that I seem to have become more outgoing as I’ve gotten older, then added (tongue in cheek, of course) that that’s a regrettable development.

New Life Roles.  Being an older, retired person is a new life role, in and of itself, requiring problem-solving and creative adaptation.  Basically one is faced with the challenge of building a new life.  Being a grandparent is my most exciting and enjoyable new role, though less frequently in play for us because of geographical distance.

Wisdom and experience.  There’s probably a kernel of truth about wisdom being associated with seniorhood.  The older people are, the more things they’ve experienced, the more crises they’ve worked through, the more places they’ve been, and the more life stages they’ve traversed.  It’s kind of like visiting a museum.  By the end of childhood you’ve seen a couple of the galleries, but by your seventies or eighties you’ve gone through the whole place a couple of times. 

Growing old together.  Katja and I celebrate our 60th wedding anniversary this coming August.  Couples age and go through life stages just as individuals do.  We have both become more attuned to the hazards of aging and probably worry more about one another’s well-being than about ourselves.  I think we both appreciate that, and it makes for closer bonds.

Thankfulness.  Given average life expectancies in our society (currently about 79), I’m thankful to still be around, and I look at each passing day as a privilege and an opportunity.  A few setbacks or disabilities here and there are quite tolerable. 

Having written this, I’m feeling more enthusiastic about age-related matters.  In some respects, I find this the happiest time of life.  Of course it all depends.  Elderly persons may live in dire poverty, incur painful and life-threatening diseases, become disabled, be subject to elder abuse.  The “golden years” really refers to the post-retirement stage when individuals are relatively healthy and their activities are governed by their interests and desires rather than by health and safety concerns.   According to research summarized on webmd.com (2), the keys to a high-quality life after age 65 are good health, sufficient money, and finding one’s life meaningful.  Katja and I are doing o.k. on these dimensions (though health can bounce around a bit and meaning is sometimes elusive).  Here’s to our next adventure.

Love,

Dave 

SOURCES:

(1) rowleylegal.com.  “The Term ‘Golden Years’ Was Coined In 1959 As An Advertising Pitch For Sun City”  (Aug. 3, 2014) 

(2) webmd.com.  “What Makes the Golden Years Great?”  (May 31, 2007)