Benefits of getting older

Consumer Reports on Health says there are several good things about aging

Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, once remarked, “There are no boy philosophers”.

Fortunately, most of us do get wiser as we age. However, it’s never been a top priority of mine to rush into old age so I could be a wise, elderly, medical journalist philosopher.

Could I be wrong? Consumer Reports on Health says there are several good things about aging. So I had to read on.

It appears I was wrong on one point. I’ve always believed that the elderly suffered from more depression than younger people. After all, they see old friends die, illnesses become more frequent, their wife runs away with the local preacher and it’s not as much fun to look in the mirror.

But according to the prestigious Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rates of depression actually go down after age 60.

This fact is confirmed by several other sources. For instance, a study of 340,000 people, published by the National Academy of Science, reports that those in their 60s and 70s were less troubled by negative emotions.

Dr. Laura Carstensen, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, agrees this is the “paradox of aging”.

She says that, as people grow older, they worry less about the future than younger people and focus more on the here and now. And if they’ve just recovered from a coronary bypass operation and are happy to have survived, they’re more likely to stop worrying about the small stuff and smell the roses. Maybe she’s right, but I vividly recall that after my bypass surgery, I decided I’d better sit by the lake watching birds, and after half an hour I decided I’d had enough.

How do marriages and relationships fare as we age? Groucho Marx, the comedian, once joked, “I was married by a judge, I should have asked for a jury!”