How To Enjoy Getting Older

March 19, 2010

Interview with Sherwin Nuland, author of the book The Art of Aging: A Doctor's Prescription for Well-Being

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Mike Carruthers:
No matter what your age, the thought of getting older has to cross your mind now and again and you probably dread it. But here's some good news about getting older…

Sherwin Nuland, M.D.:
It isn't as bad as people anticipate. You see it's the anticipation; it's the image of what age should be that makes people conform to the image.

Dr. Sherwin Nuland, author of the book The Art of Aging: A Doctor's Prescription for Well-Being …

We have an image of what old people should be and the reason we have that image is that the generation before mine actually slid into old age and let themselves become decrepit without knowing (because there was no research to prove it) that it doesn't have to be that way. They thought of it as inevitability.

However, Dr. Nuland says the quality of your aging is almost always a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It doesn't have to be the way many people see it. As we get older our genes and our chromosomes and our heredity become less important. It's our intellectual and our physical maintenance that become the most important factors.

So, if you dread getting older, getting older will likely be dreadful.

It's important to think of one's self as someone with a future. In other words, to me aging is only a stage of life - it's a developmental stage and you've got to think of yourself as still developing.