Takeaways from what I've been reading and watching—on diagnoses, inheritances, apologies that never come, and the dinosaurs that stuck us with aging
Last month I wrote about holding two things at once: The reality of aging alongside genuine optimism about it all.
The articles I’ve been reading this month dig into the reality side of things, and how much of what shapes our later life isn’t chosen. Things like diagnoses, caregiving, and complicated family relationships. These reports and essays take constraints as given and ask what we can do inside them.
In Gayle Kirschenbaum’s post, it’s forgiving a difficult mother without getting the apology first. An episode from the Finders and Keepers podcast looks at the objects we inherit with no instructions and no say in the matter. And David Epstein encourages us to embrace constraint, decide when something is good enough, and call off the search for the best possible option.
María Tomás-Keegan’s essay on caregiving sums it up, writing that she and her husband “couldn’t change this new situation, only how we would respond to it and build our days around it.”
It’s Great to Have Younger Friends—Most of the Time
Hal Rubenstein, Oldster
Hal Rubenstein, host of The Happy Grownup podcast, makes the case for cultivating younger friendships after 50 — and then admits the sting of catching those same friends posting from parties he wasn’t invited to. As he writes, “What must be acknowledged is that though you and your younger pals may be equal in affection for one another, that doesn’t make you peers.”
The friendship works because you’re not their contemporary. You’ve been around long enough to tell the difference between a hard season and a panic, and that’s exactly what they come to you for.
“What brings people together isn’t necessarily common demographics. What bonds us are shared passions—for food, causes, projects, location, amusements, charities, humor, vacation destinations. When these intersections occur, friendships are forged. But different age groups also have specific interests, and their own idiosyncratic comfort zones.”
We’re Living Longer But Getting Lonelier. Here’s What Can Help
Michael Clinton, TIME
This excerpt from Michael Clinton’s new book Longevity Nation looks at different solutions to late-life loneliness: civic-engagement programs, intergenerational matchmaking, social-connection platforms, and AI companions like ElliQ.
Robert Waldinger of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has been tracking hundreds of adults since 1938, says relationships need tending the same way bodies do, a thing he calls “social fitness,” and that a real new friendship is still possible at any age.
“In the future of the 100-year life, a new friendship at 70 could last thirty years.”
When Caregiving Changes the Room
María Tomás-Keegan, BoldTimers
One morning María Tomás-Keegan looked at a length of green oxygen tubing, newly run between two rooms of the house, and realized she couldn’t keep treating her husband’s illness as just one more appointment to manage.
In this essay, she writes about all the layers of caregiving: The equipment and the scheduling sit on the surface, with the grief lying underneath. Through conversations where they keep telling each other the truth about what has changed, she and her husband are finding their way through illness and care.
“Caregiving can be full of love, and it can also be lonely. Both can be true at the same time.”
Forgiving My 102-Year-Old Mom
Gayle Kirschenbaum, Oldster
Gayle Kirschenbaum spent decades in conflict with a critical, difficult mother, and then ended up as her near-full-time caregiver. The turn to care, she writes, came when she “stopped waiting for an apology—or even for her to acknowledge she’d done anything wrong—before I allowed myself to heal.”
There was no single dramatic scene where it all resolved. Instead it was slow steps: digging into her mother’s hidden early life, repeating the same rehearsed boundary at the start of every phone call, and eventually changing their hurtful patterns.
“Forgiveness isn’t forgetting. It’s remembering with context.”
Finders and Keepers: What to Do with the Things We Inherit
Rachel Kramer Bussel with Emily Hessney Lynch, Open Secrets Magazine
In this episode from Open Secrets Magazine, Emily Hessney Lynch talks about inheriting a piano and a necklace from her mother, going through her grandmother’s basement, and the conversations nobody had in time about what any of the objects were supposed to mean.
She chooses to sell her late mother’s designer handbags, which had never meant anything to her, and puts the money toward tattoos, which do. The episode also looks forward to what we hope our kids will remember about us through our own objects.
“No one had talked to her about her wishes, her possessions, what we wanted to be done with them.”
These Surprising Early Symptoms May Be Linked to Alzheimer’s
Meryl Davids Landau, National Geographic
Up to a decade before memory problems show up, Alzheimer’s is already leaving traces. The early signs can show up in financial decisions, body weight, how a person talks, their sense of smell, and mood changes. Just one of these doesn’t mean much on its own, but several together are enough to warrant a conversation with a doctor.
The financial changes reflect what I see often with clients, and the advice here is solid: simplify accounts and monitor for unexpected expenditures.
“You’re going to be diagnosed with a very expensive medical condition, and your body is basically preparing you for that by destroying your finances.”
Your Decision Making Is All Wrong
David Epstein, The New York Times
David Epstein, author of Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better, digs into Herbert Simon’s idea of “satisficing.” As he breaks it down, you can get better at making decisions by looking at a handful of options, picking one that genuinely clears the bar, and getting on with your life.
Searching has a price most of us never bother to count, and the people who hold out for the very best tend to end up less satisfied and second-guess their choices.
“A great deal of energy gets freed up for living, instead of being spent on wondering about how to live.”
How Dinosaurs May Have Cursed Us With Aging
PBS Eons
And the fun one to end on. PBS Eons walks through the Longevity Bottleneck Hypothesis — how mammals evolved as short-lived prey scurrying below dinosaurs. They didn’t live long enough to get old and lost the ability to repair and regenerate cells that reptiles, fish, and amphibians still use to age slowly.
The dinosaurs are long gone, but the inheritance isn’t. So perhaps aging itself is the oldest thing none of us got to choose: A constraint handed down by an ecosystem that disappeared 65 million years ago.
“As we get older, our bodies begin to deteriorate, our fertility declines, and, eventually, we die. But while we take it for granted, from an evolutionary perspective, aging is actually something of a paradox.”
Related: When Not to Give Advice: Why Timing Matters More Than Being Right