I'm like chardonnay, get better over time
—Lizzo from “Juice”
I learned recently from an anatomist friend that as a population ages, it gets more diverse. (Makes sense when you think about it.) While one-year-olds will be a pretty homogeneous group, 80-year-olds will be all over the map—in terms of cellular and metabolic health; psychological profiles; cognitive function; social well-being; and every other measure you can think of. So the older we get, the more varied our experiences of life.
And yet we’re all familiar with the traditional narrative about growing older, which is pretty unified in the crummy picture it paints: Your body inevitably falls apart; you become someone who can no longer accomplish the tasks of daily living; and your brain starts to dribble out your ears while you sleep. Plus you’re lonely and isolated. Your teeth fall out and nobody wants to talk to you any more because all you do is go on and on about your rheumatiz and that pain in your sacroiliac.
We all know older people who blow up the stereotype: the 91-year-old who is sharp-witted, funny, and physically energetic; the 87-year-old who still slalom skis every winter; the 85-year-old who begins oil painting for the first time in her life. And yet the stereotype of decay and deterioration has a lot of traction; it’s kind of all over the place.
So I was all ears when another friend told me about a workshop she attended on gerotranscendence, a term coined by Swedish sociologist Lars Tornstam. Basically, Tornstam recognized that older people have access to a unique set of superpowers that simply are not available to younger people. Here’s Tornstam writing in the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology in 2011:
Based on intellectual input from scholars such as Jung and Erikson, together with qualitative as well as quantitative data, I have been able to capture a certain kind of positive aging in a grounded-theory-like concept I have called gerotranscendence. The theory suggests that human aging includes a potential to mature into a new outlook on and understanding of life. Gerotranscendence implies a shift in metaperspective, from a materialistic and rational view of the world to a more cosmic and transcendent one, normally accompanied by an increase in life satisfaction.
Word.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Lars rocks so hard that I want to put him front and center right away.
When my friend told me about gerotranscendence, I started researching coverage of it in lay publications. Newspapers and magazine articles would mention Tornstam’s research, maybe quote him, and often create a list of traits that characterize the experience of gerotranscendence. What I found interesting is that those articles rarely mentioned what I consider one of the most intriguing aspects of gerotranscendence (and my own personal bent will be revealed here): the delight resulting from connection to the natural world. (That detail is pretty prominent in Tornstam’s own writings.)
This connection to the natural world seems to become more important and deeper for many people as they grow older. Here’s Lars again from the same paper:
The joy of experiencing the macrocosm through the microcosm materializes [in gerotranscendence], often related to experiences in nature, such as by experiencing a transcendence into the universe when looking at a flower.
This last quote comes from a section of the journal article that is subheaded “Rejoicing.” (!)
Other gerotranscendent superpowers include:
*Rationalist constrictions that suggest everything has to be measured and explained give way to an acceptance that some things are mysteries that exist outside of materialistic explanations.
*Music, for many, becomes a fundamental way to access mystery and vastness.
*There’s an acceptance of one’s past, coupled with an opening out and forward into the future. The pieces of one’s life begin to fit together and make sense.
*Various identities tried on and even inhabited throughout the years fall away and make possible an inquiry into the nature of the genuine self.
*One develops a suspicion of the right/wrong, good/bad duality we’re constantly forced to contend with, substituted instead by generous tolerance.
*The gerotranscendent individual feels connected to all life on earth.
There’s more, of course; I mean, we’re talking about this guy’s life’s work. There are additional characteristics of gerotranscendence and ways of understanding how it allows for a fitting transition from the life that preceded it and whatever will come after.
Generally speaking, Tornstam found that gerotranscendence develops with age and appears to be linked to greater life satisfaction. Of course, gerotranscendence will not be everyone’s trajectory. Cognitive decline and dementia are real, as are other forms of deterioration and loss. Tornstam’s work simply allows for another narrative that broadens and diversifies our possibilities when we discuss the experience of growing older.
Psychologist Erik Erikson outlined developmental challenges and tasks that he believed individuals face at various stages in their lives. For each developmental stage he identified, he assigned a particular dichotomy that defined the possible range of experience in that period of life. From age 40 to 65, Erikson identified the task as generativity versus stagnation. Generativity involves finding your life’s work and contributing to the next generation. If one doesn’t succeed in meeting this task, one can feel stagnant and regretful about not leaving a positive mark on the world. For older adults, from age 65 to the end of life, Erikson identified the developmental challenge as integrity versus despair. People in this stage, he believed, reflect back on their lives and will either feel satisfied or bitter and regretful.
I appreciate Erikson’s stages, but I love the cosmic dimension that Lars Tornstam’s work adds to it.
Years ago, a friend from my youth produced a documentary TV series on Alzheimer’s. Recently, we discussed some of his takeaways from that project. The neurologists he talked to for the docu—and he talked to oodles of them—reported that normal aging doesn’t include a paring down of what one has been able to do throughout the lifespan. Things may take longer, though. So if it took an hour to assemble a pie in your 30s, it might take twice that long in your 80s. But you should still be able to do all the things. The neurologists said that, if a person is not able to do what they were able to do earlier in life, there’s likely a disease process underway. So if one can no longer sequence the steps necessary to assemble that pie, dementia may be to blame. Or if that person can no longer hold the pie plate to put it in the oven, another kind of disease process, perhaps Parkinson’s, may be the reason.
This all tracks: It makes sense that one may likely do things more slowly as one ages, and that one might look forward to doing and enjoying what one has done and enjoyed throughout the lifespan. The doing-things-more-slowly piece leads me to this hypothesis: I believe that slowing down may be an essential ingredient in the experience of gerotranscendence. More to the point: Could downshifting be the special sauce that makes it possible for the numinous and the transcendent to really seep into a life?
I identify with a lot of the characteristics of gerotranscendence—particularly the deep connection to nature and music, the experience of oneness with all life, and the discomfort with black-and-white definitions of right and wrong. When I was recovering from cancer treatment, I had to hit a big, fat, cosmic pause button. My life up until then was basically a non-stop blur of activity. Could that opportunity to stop—to step outside the world of frantic enterprise and what we typically define as productivity—have allowed me to acquaint myself with many of the experiences that characterize gerotranscendence? And could those experiences simply be there all along, waiting patiently and generously for us to tap into them?
It raises questions about certain traditional societies where rest and the numinous are woven into quotidian life and throughout the lifespan. In the first world, we’ve really put a premium on running around. But what might be possible, in terms of individual and social health, with different emphases, with a lot more time and space for observing and appreciating and understanding our place in a much larger, more mysterious context? That is, what if the shift that Lars Tornstam talks about—from a rationalistic, materialistic perspective to a cosmic, transcendent perspective—wasn’t necessary because we all saw things from that cosmic, transcendent perspective throughout our lifespans, so our thinking never needed to shift? Because we were already there?
Here’s a link to a New York Times blog post about Tornstam and gerotranscendence. Some of the comments are fascinating and beautiful:
https://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/appreciating-the-peculiar-virtues-of-old-age/
And here’s a link to Los Lobos’s “Gates of Gold.” Kinda captures the spirit of gerotranscendence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzLOMYeA03k