What Gen-Z can Learn from the Old

I recently picked up Happiness is a Choice You Make by John Leland, which is a book compiling interviews from seniors living in the US who are 85+. There are some central themes in the book, such as the eponymous title about how happiness is all relative, and it’s what you make of it, rather than measuring against some unwavering absolute scale.

One striking observation from the book was that old people are really “real” about everything. There is no bs, no flowery vocab or lying. Everything is the way it is, as objectively as possible. From the interview subjects mentioning how there is no afterlife and no thought of religion despite their various religious backgrounds, to accepting death as what it is, e.g. “there is no paradox in believing that you had a good life and that enough is enough, and it is time to go,” there is so much “fax” in the book. You can’t really argue with it, and it’s a sensible conclusion to make, regardless of your age; these people making these statements just happen to be old. I was impacted by this thought quite a bit, because as a young person, we constantly respect people who “keep it real” and refuse to deal with bs and nonsensical things. So if there’s so much respect for it, we should respect old people, which makes sense, but why don’t we younger people practice it more? Is there actually any value to being not-real early on, and instead delaying the inevitable later on?

It might be the classic local / global maxima question, where being younger and doing stupid things and spouting lies for clout is the way to go, but as you get older, these dumb actions don’t make sense anymore. There are some wisdoms around this, including “you should try everything once,” which seem to conflict the being real part. But the fact that there is so much sustained young and dumb behavior is strange — is it purely irrational or is there some method to the madness?

Despite all the wisdoms that the older people have to give, they did acknowledge that they don’t have any “real material” wisdom to give to the current or younger generations, because we have better education, science, and we just generally know more than they do. I really liked this, because it gives a happy agreement to the conflict where old people think young people are stupid for making mistakes, but young people think old people are lame for not trying and being stuck to old principles. There is some wisdom to old people in knowing how certain things will go — the book mentions that old people lose most cognitive functions but keep their pattern matching skills remarkably well — but old people still acknowledge that they are behind in trends and knowledge in general, which is a good compromise for both the younger and older generations.

On the topic of real-ness, it was cool to see that cumulative actions will go into your later life, but even with the most healthy regimens, age will catch up to you and there’s nothing you can do about it. This means that no matter how many kale salads you eat, how much you exercise, you will succumb to joint pain and a foggier mind when you’re older. There was a remarkable amount of fight displayed in all of the interviewees in the book, despite that all of them were ok with death. They refused wheelchairs as long as possible, even if it was a reasonable choice, and rejected help from aides even if it meant more painstaking steps up the stairs. But the other part of the cumulative actions is that there are some things that go with you forever. One of these is your mind, which you can exercise until your death. If you keep on exercising your mind, you’ll be able to keep most of your cognitive function to have a much better life than someone who doesn’t. It is just speculation, but it is likely that people who end up with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s are people who don’t exercise their mind as much when they get to old age, and thus end up losing cognitive function faster than people who use their mind. In terms of using your mind, it can be anything from reading, to playing board games or socializing. It doesn’t have to be deep study or playing IQ puzzles. This thought of exercising your mind is especially relevant now, when TikTok and other mindless media methods are being poured into our brains every second. We are getting little packets of dopamine for eye candy and random catchphrases, but our attention spans and ability to have longer trains of thought are declining…

Overall, the takeaway lessons I’ve learned from reading about old people are that

• It’s ok to be real now, even if people think it’s lame. With time, you will probably be right. That is not to say you should be annoying to people, but you should be ok to sticking to principles.
• Having money in later stages of life is immensely helpful for having a better quality of life. While a luxury apartment might mean the world to a 20 year old who wants to flex a nice rooftop on their friends, for an old person to have a fully-assisted apartment with non-molding furniture and good sunlight without clutter everywhere is even more important. Needing vs wanting things.
• Physical limitations will inevitably catch up to you with older age, so make sure to get everything you want to do that requires physical ability earlier on in your life.
• Being grateful for everything you have, despite the circumstances, is the way to play the long game. Life will have its ups and downs, but if you can look through everything with less complaint, you will live a fuller and better life.