What Do You Wish People Understood More about Aging?

[00:00:13] Speaker A: Hi, everyone. Jake Johnson here. Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and new year. Season 5 of the Age of Aging is coming up very soon in February. But in the meantime, I wanted to share with you some bonus content from last season that didn't make the cut in any actual episodes. So towards the end of last season, the Age of Aging team got the idea to end every interview with one question that was the same for everyone. And that question was, what is one thing you wish people understood more about aging? We weren't really sure what we were going to do with it, but we were genuinely curious what kind of responses we get. And asking the question, hearing people's responses has been so fun. So I wanted to share a few of them. We've gotten so far with you. At the end of the episode, I'll give you the full list of speakers by name. But for now, enjoy. What do you wish people understood more about aging? [00:01:12] Speaker B: Gosh, that's a good question. It's not linear. Aging isn't linear. 85 for some people can be 65 for others. And that there's not a cliff you fall off at 65 and become old. It's different for everybody. And the way that people feel inside doesn't change. I was just talking to my dad in England. He's 82, and he was telling me about his experience in medical school. He's a doctor. And he said something extraordinary. He said, I just feel the same inside as now as I did then. And I think to remember that, that our spirit is still alive in there. It doesn't become this small, shriveled thing. Maybe our bodies fail us and sometimes our brains might. And more and more, I think our brains are going to. We're going to outlive our brains. But I think the human spirit is incredibly resilient. [00:02:11] Speaker C: Though it is, can come in different forms. Change continues to be possible. And that can be physical change. It can be psychological change. It will be opinions. It can be behavior. It can be that. I think there is a misperception that old dogs can't learn new tricks. And I think they can. It may be more difficult. [00:02:36] Speaker A: Right. [00:02:36] Speaker C: There's certain behavior, for example, that visualize over a very long period of time to unlearn that is a little harder than it is for a newborn because they haven't. They don't have those habits yet. But I really do think that we as older folks have more practice in learning, in learning things. And so I think that those things sort of balance out and I hope for myself and for those that age around me, that we stay curious and we continue to grow. [00:03:06] Speaker D: For me, and this is both. As someone who is now in her mid-40s and taking care of her father and has a mother who's about to turn 80, I think it can feel, whether it's a dementia diagnosis, a chronic illness, whatever the thing is, or just getting older and your body is more tired, that it is not the end of things, that there are still new relationships to be had and there are still new ways to approach life. It just looks different. And I wish, I wish that I could have gotten that message to my dad, because I don't. He did not have that message and, and, and gave up. But, and I've said this before, my relationship with my dad, my second relationship with him post dementia, like, once it got to the middle level, was actually better than the relationship we had in my youth, and it was very different. And so I had gone through a lot of grief, not unnecessarily because it is a loss of a person in some way, but it was actually better. [00:04:13] Speaker C: I wish people didn't try to. Didn't know I ate. [00:04:19] Speaker E: I guess we're all doing it all the time and usually nobody talks about it except for like, oh, I got this random pain today, or, oh, I'm having this problem, or, oh, my spouse, partner, parent is now having this problem. But, like, I don't know if it's an American thing. I don't know if this is the way it is in other cultures, but we tend to be, we tend to approach things. I find in America in this very sort of stereotypical up by your own bootstraps kind of way, which is antithetical to community. Like, oh, you're supposed to be able to take care of your own thing. So everybody is sort of like, you embark on this journey, everyone seems to be doing it from scratch. You know, it's like as, as this started, I kept looking around, I was like, we are not the first people to go through this. Why is it that we don't have any information or know how to approach like. And yes, all approaches are different and everybody has different resources, but we've had other people in my. I've had two. I've had an advance and an uncle. My mother's older sister and older brother had Alzheimer's. We've had very little communication in my family about that. We just know they had it and we know there was a decline, but very little communication about that. And also, what's one of the interesting things is as my mother goes through this process. She hasn't always been the most forthcoming about her life, but I get to see, weirdly, more and more of her actual personality. Not like the personality that she would. She was a military wife or a military family. Like having to behave a certain way in a very prescribed way, a very prim way, a very don't be too loud, don't make waves kind of way. But it's almost like as she forgets how to do other things, she forgets how to be that version of herself and we actually get to see more of how she really is. And that even as she is 70, 75, 80. 85. She just turned 85 on October 2nd, that there is a core to her that is the version of her that we never knew because she was being parent or she was being teacher, she was being a officer's wife or she was being. I mean, that's not to say it's all for the best because, you know, people have rage. You keep that in. But, you know, you're expressing it now. And a lot of it is surprising. But in a strange way, I feel like we're getting to see a greater breadth of who she is and. And has been and will be as a person. [00:07:12] Speaker F: Well, having no experience of it myself, I can only. No, I think that the sort of received narrative about aging is that it is diminishing it's loss, it's taking richness and it's sort of widowing down, particularly with dementia or a neurodegenerative disease. And I think what we're sort of what Ann Adams life screams out for and maybe Ravel's life and this play is, yeah, no one would choose dementia. No one would choose that road. But when it comes, you know who you're going to be, you're going to be that version of you. You know your life is going to be. It's going to be hard and complex and rich and full of love and pain, kind of like everybody else's life, that you're not less human, you're not diminished, you're not disappearing, even if it very understandably might feel that way to the people who love you. I think the question that play is trying to ask, I think is can we reframe that? Can we fight against that impulse to think of this as pure loss? And can we just say, okay, this is. This is a moment in life. If I'm a caregiver or family member, spouse, whomever, instead of seeing this as a shrinking down to nothing, can I see this as a chance to stand in a new relationship with this kind of new person who is emerging and honor that and love that person, even as I of course feel pain for what's going away. I think that's the challenge. [00:08:51] Speaker G: The stigma of dementia is so pervasive that even at the healthcare level we do this. The diagnosis and adios which is a credit to Sharon hall who is a caregiver advocate and she talks a lot about diagnosis and adios and you get dementia and your life is over and you're supposed to go put your affairs in order and it's just not the truth. People can live well with dementia. They can have fulfilling and engaging lives with dementia through throughout the course of it. And it's not about suffering every minute. It's about living well and moving forward. And I think improv is a great way of helping people to live well and move forward and do it together in a collaborative way. [00:09:38] Speaker H: Well, I think we think about the deficits of aging and there are plenty. We're as a group, not as tech savvy. We find dealing with passwords and you know, menus that require Internet savvy. Oh that challenge. It's a general not everyone we don't remember quite as well. But those are only small parts of the human brain. And things that many elders are advanced in are what I would call wisdom, social connections studied in the laboratory. We know that elders are happier, feel better about social relations than they did when they were younger. Almost everyone has had a grandparent that had a profound influence on them and their trajectory. So bottling capping that unbelievable social creativity and wisdom is something that our society has to keep thinking about. [00:10:39] Speaker I: People have a bias around older populations. Like they assume that they're out of touch. And a lot of them, I'm sorry, are way more informed than the average person around my age. Like these people actually still watch the news. There's obviously flawed like delivery that's not our fault from these big media outlets but they're pretty well informed. I would say they actually skew way liberal. I guess maybe this is has something to do with they're taking an improv class. So they're generally speaking actually you know I have such a wide array. I have a trans student at my Jersey class. I have the man who brought me to teach the class there, he's a vet, he's not like super liberal. But people just think that they're going to be very close minded or they're going to like be. They just have all these things in their head about older people that are just patently false. And sometimes they, they ground me. They're like, you didn't explain that well. And I'm like, okay, right, I didn't. I just kind of. They're like, you're mumbling. I'm like, I am, I'm hungover. But like they, they catch on pretty well to these pretty tough concepts in long form improv, like the game of the scene and things like that. It's not just like, hey, pass. Like it's not all silly, easy stuff. So I just never underestimate them. [00:12:04] Speaker J: I would like people to understand a little more about ageism. So broadening it up. Not just people living with dementia, but ageism is real. And I feel like even as gerontologists, we sometimes make ageist comments. And I think recognizing that ageism is not productive and figuring out a way to have an age inclusive society will go a long way towards improving people's mental health, improving interactions with people, improving inclusion so that people are engaged in meaningful ways in the world around them. So whether it's coming from the older adult themselves or from others, I think understanding that ageism can be really, really have very negative effects and trying to counteract that and create positive images of aging. I mean, aging is not all wonderful. There are of course losses, but there can still be gains and growth. And I, I think recognizing that there can be joy and connection and people can continue to live as they age, I think that's a really powerful message and I feel like we don't hear that often enough. [00:13:25] Speaker C: Ultimately, aging is a gift. [00:13:34] Speaker A: In order of appearance. I'd like to thank Lucy Davenport, Amanda Lee Williams, James Bonus, Tracy, Leo Marks, Jennifer Kraft, Morgan Bruce Miller, Leah Lawler, Candace Kemp, and Jake Broder. And thanks for listening to this episode of the Age of Aging and stay sticking around till the end. If you like the show, please consider giving it a rating and leaving us a review. If you know someone who might be interested in the show, share this episode with them. Season 5 is coming very soon, so stay tuned. Thanks everyone.