may have accurately characterized the behavior of the older population in the 1950s, but that it was a mistake to infer that this pattern was universal. According to these critics, activity theory or continuity theory might well be a better description of how older people live today. If the critics’ view is correct, does it mean that any theories of aging simply express the way aging appears at a certain time in history? If so, how would it be possible to develop an account that is more general and not limited to a certain time and place?2 The United States as a society tends to place a high value on success and achievement. Does that fact suggest that the goal of successful aging is an appropriate approach to thinking about growing old in the United States? Are there aspects of growing older that could present a problem for the goal of successful aging?
3 Psychologist Carl Jung believed that the psychological goal of later life is to become more and more oneself as an individual. What does this goal mean in practice? What drawbacks to this idea can you think of? If we adopt Jung’s approach, how would we evaluate older people who remain very much as they have always been, in contrast to older people who dramatically change their lives, say, after the point of retirement or widowhood?
4 Imagine that you are now 80 years old and have discovered that you may not have long to live. Your grandchildren have asked you to write about what you’ve learned about the meaning of life, especially in the last few years. In your statement, contrast what you believe now (as a future 80-year-old) with what you believed in the past (at what is your present age).
5 Assume that you are the activities director of a church-affiliated nursing home that prides itself on promoting the residents’ quality of life. Write a memo for the nursing home director outlining a range of activities that would help enhance the residents’ sense of the meaning of life in the long-term care facility.
6 Is the idea of meaning in life something purely personal and private, or does it have some wider social importance? Does discussing the question of meaning give us an understanding of older people’s behavior, or is it simply confusing? In addressing this question, consider other issues discussed in this book, such as assisted suicide, work and leisure, and the allocation of health care resources for life prolongation. How would the idea of a meaning for old age affect one’s view of these questions?
7 Consider carefully Lars Tornstam’s concept of gerotranscendence. Using only the simplest and most everyday language, try to give an explanation of gerotranscendence to a friend or relative who knows nothing about gerontology and is not particularly sympathetic to religion.
Suggested Readings
Atchley, R., Spirituality and Aging, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
Bateson, M. C., Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom, New York: Vintage, 2011.
Frankl, V., Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logo Therapy (I. Lasch, Trans.), New York: Pocket Books, 1973.
Haight, B. K., and Haight, B. S., The Handbook of Structured Life Review, Baltimore: Health Professions Press, 2007.
Kimble, M. A., McFadden, S. H., Ellor, J. W., and Seeber, J. J. (Eds.), Aging, Spirituality and Religion: A Handbook, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2003.
Richmond, L., Aging as a Spiritual Practice: A Contemplative Guide to Growing Older and Wiser, New York: Gotham Books, 2012.
Controversy 2 Why Do Our Bodies Grow Old?
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1858/1891), in his poem “The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay,” invokes a memorable image of longevity and mortality, the example of a wooden horse cart, or shay, that was designed to be long-lasting:
Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way,
It ran a hundred years to a day …?
This wonderful “one-hoss shay,” we learn, was carefully built so that every part of it aged at the same rate and didn’t wear out until the whole thing fell apart all at once. Exactly a century after the carriage was produced, the village parson was driving this marvelous machine down the street, when
What do you think the parson found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you’re not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once,
All at once, and nothing first,
Just as bubbles do when they burst.
The wonderful one-horse shay is the perfect image of an optimistic hope about aging: a long, healthy existence followed by an abrupt end of life, with no decline. The one-horse shay image also suggests that life has a built-in “warranty expiration” date. But where does this limit on longevity come from? Is it possible to extend life beyond what we know? The living organism with the longest individual life span is the bristlecone pine tree found in California, more than 4,500 years old, with no end in sight.
The maximum human life span appears to be around 120 years. In fact, we have no valid records of anyone living much beyond that length. There have been claims of people living to the advanced age of 150 or even longer. Some claims have persuaded the National Enquirer, and others even convinced a scientist at Harvard Medical School. But whatever the Enquirer or Harvard scientist wanted to believe, there has never been proof of such longevity. Quite the contrary. Despite the fact that we have millions upon millions of verified birth records in the 20th century, until recently, there were no proven cases at all of any human being living beyond age 120. Then, in 1995, a Frenchwoman named Jeanne Louise Calment did just that, before dying in 1997 at the documented age of 122 (Robine, 1998). Madame Calment actually remembered seeing Vincent van Gogh as a child!
Some scientists argue that even the idea of maximum life span is based only on empirical observation. With biological breakthroughs in the future, might we someday surpass that limit? Indeed, optimists ask, why settle for the one-horse shay?
On the face of it, prolonging the human life span sounds good. But is it feasible? Will it make our lives better? One cartoon in The New Yorker shows a middle-aged man at a bar complaining to his companion: “See, the problem with doing things to prolong your life is that all the extra years come at the end, when you’re old” (Mankoff, 1994). Another cartoon depicts two nursing home residents in wheelchairs confiding to each other: “Just think. If we hadn’t given up smoking, we’d have missed all this.”
These cartoons point to the fact that often the consequences of biophysical aging appear well before reaching maximum life span. Some observers believe that the proper aim of medicine should therefore be to intervene, perhaps even to slow down the rate of aging, so that more and more of us can remain healthy up to the very end of life. At that point, the body would simply “fall apart” all at once, like the wonderful one-horse shay (Avorn, 1984). This view, mentioned earlier, is known as the compression of morbidity, an idea developed and promoted by James Fries (1988, 2004).
The compression-of-morbidity hypothesis looks forward to greater numbers of people who postpone the age of onset of chronic infirmity (Brooks, 1996). In other words, we would aim for a healthy
