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One of the keys to well-being for older adults lies in chronoception, the perceived duration of time. Anyone over a certain age can well attest to how time sense has changed. In childhood, the two months of summer felt like an eternity; with advanced age, those same two months seem to fly by in a blink. For aging adults, it seems as though time’s velocity increases with each advancing year. Grasp it as much as we may want, we cannot stop the clock. There are, however, ways to reconnect with that long-ago sense of growth and change.
Is it possible to recapture that sense of slowed-down time? Einstein did it:
“People like you and me never grow old,” he wrote a friend later in life. “We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.”
Novelty and curiosity are the food of childhood. We seek out, explore, and immerse ourselves in situations with the potential for new information and/or experiences. This is the key to vitality: It is how we, as older adults, can grow via our own activity rather than submit completely to decline.
Engaging in something enticing enough to warrant rapt attention is an engine of growth at any age.
If you are feeling lost in your later years, not enticed to explore, look to your inborn gifts.
We are all born with gifts. Regardless of age, mental health is a function of expressing those gifts, and if we do not—as I like to say—it backs up like the plumbing.
For the older adult, there are many avenues available for exploration. Look through your life. What came easily? What did you enjoy doing? Options for questing include:
- External cognitive learning (new facts about a topic of interest)
- Internal cognitive pondering (thinking a lot about a new idea)
- Expressive learning (developing and engaging in any of the arts)
- Internal sensory seeking (letting oneself experience new and unusual experiences)
This kind of profoundly focused attention can result in what is termed “positive plasticity,” a positive state in which neural pathways are strengthened and brains rewired. The more one engages in the activity, the more that positive states become accessible.
Beyond well-being, there is evidence that curiosity can play a critical role in maintaining cognitive functioning as well as physical health in older adults. Engagement in creative activities, such as painting or writing, regardless of talent, reduces anxiety and depression levels. Brain scans show that creative work activates the same brain regions as meditation. In a previous post, I described this as one of the mind tricks for cognitive health in old age. Researchers have suggested that it is the dopaminergic and noradrenergic mechanisms that support these protective effects.
Curiosity and creativity are intrinsically wise. In fact, Peterson and Seligman, in Character Strengths and Virtues (2004), identified creativity and curiosity, along with open-mindedness, love of learning, and perspective, as the character traits of the wise person. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it sustains us throughout life, most particularly in our later years.
