Library Notes


Rebecca Hyde  


What is “aging”? It is not a disease, but a developmental process that affects body and mind. In the “Art of Aging: A Doctor’s Prescription for Well-Being,” Dr. Sherwin Nuland, clinical professor of surgery at Yale University, describes the aging process and suggests ways we can “attune” ourselves to its progress. We can choose to take an active, creative part in cultivating our personal art of aging. According to the professional literature of geriatrics, the ability to adapt, to learn and then accept one’s limitations is a determinant of “successful aging.” Dr. Nuland prefers “attune” to “adapt”: attuning ourselves to the passage of years means being “newly receptive to signals welcome and unwelcome, to a variety of experiences not previously within our range, while achieving a kind of harmony with the real circumstances of our lives.”

For Dr. Nuland the “real circumstances of our lives” do not include a vision of an ageless future in which the responses of our bodies to the passage of time, heredity, and the biology of life can be rearranged to prevent or even reverse aging. His “prescription for well-being” is not a detailed list of rules to follow but rather a description of those people who have lived creative and productive lives, managing limitations and chronic illnesses. There is a remarkable portrait of Michael DeBakey, who lived a life of “vibrant longevity.” What goals did he have at the age of ninety-six? He just had a schedule of things that needed to be done, but didn’t dwell on whether he was going to be alive to do them. “I’m absolutely sure I”ll arrive to where I’m going” was DeBakey’s philosophy, which applied to getting on a plane or death.

Two other books examine aging with differing doses of inspiration and hard realism. In “The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully,” Joan Chittister, a Benedictine Sister, offers a collection of essays on the rewards of “mature life,” or aging well. It is time to let go of fantasies of eternal youth and fears of getting older, and engage in a new stage of life. And it has its own purpose, which is to give us time to assimilate and make new choices in the way we live.

Susan Jacoby wrote “Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age.” She is a critic of the “young old age” or “new old age” featured in American culture. This new norm presents “a formidable obstacle to any effort to deal pragmatically with the social, economic, and medical problems associated with real old age.” As for the individual, the right to feel rotten affords better preparation for suffering and loss than inflated expectations that lead to real despair: it’s energizing. Jacoby was amazed at the intensity (and poetry) of her grandmother’s awareness of death. The old woman mourned the end of her usefulness but looking at the river said, “It’s good to know that the beauty of the world will go on without me.”