What causes old age.
Inertia — 165
The producer of old age is habit: the deathly process of doing the same thing in the same way at the same hour day after day, first from carelessness, then from inclination, at last from cowardice or inertia.
Habit is necessary; but it is the habit of having careless habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive... one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.
— Edith Wharton
Lying beneath her reflections on the upper-class societies she was born in, literary icon Edith Wharton identified a pernicious culprit—the deadening grip of habitual living.
Monday to Sunday, we fall into menial patterns that often put the smoke out of our sense of curiosity—settling instead for the comfort of "familiar" routines. It’s from this surrender to the monotonous that Wharton warns inexorably ushers in the premature decay we call "comfort".
Even though the reality of ageing is inescapable, Wharton described much of the typical deterioration we associate with late life as insidious habits of mind. She asserts that when we sleepwalk through our days on autopilot, automatically performing the same sequences of tendency, we cut ourselves off from what rejuvenates us: novelty, engagement, and wonder.
Such lulls into mindless habit form out of a mere lack of present-moment awareness, or the fear many of us have to let our hearts open and speak more than we think; we can be so consumed by the goings-on in our minds that we neglect to really show up for the richness of the lived experience. Then, these negligent patterns solidify, becoming the deep grooves of reinforced preference to stick with what we now know and are comfortable with. Lastly, these grooves petrify us into dreading any deviation from our ruts.
But this ossification isn’t inevitable, as Wharton also contends in her work. We don’t have to stay rigid in our beliefs just because we think we’re "too old" to change. Avid cultivation of openness, curiosity, and joyful embracement will keep you revitalised at any age.
I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.
— Edith Wharton
To intentionally nurture our hunger for fresh perspectives and receptivity to change is to be alive. To seek out new ideas, skills, and people that engage our minds and bodies in novel ways. To revel in the magic of both the big and profound and small, everyday wonders. And to earnestly show up for each new moment rather than lapsing out into retreat, despair, and falsehoods.
This ethos does align with modern research on the underpinnings of ageing. It’s no surprise that challenging ourselves mentally and physically steadily rebuilds our neural architecture, strengthening our cognitive capacities and shielding us against degenerative disease such as dementia.
Novelty signals our brain to sprout new pathways and connections, beautifully supercharging our neuroplasticity. Whereas stagnation and monotony initiate atrophy and withering.
So, while in some ways, the ageing process may be predetermined by our genes, the degree to which we succumb to stereotypical deterioration is substantially under our own influence. To remain vibrantly alive, you must continually quest for growth and discovery. Do not resign yourself to staleness. Insatiable curiosity is your fountain of youth.