[2022-03-30] Aging and cancer
A friend sent me a link to an episode of Glennon Doyle's podcast We Can Do Hard Things. In the episode "Pro-Aging: Why the Best is Yet to Come," Glennon interviews Ashton Applewhite, author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism.
Glennon opens with a question about some of the myths or stereotypes about aging. Ashton notes that the biggest myth is that all older people are the same. In reality, she says, "we grow more different from each other as we age. Every newborn is unique. Every 17-year-old is different, but they are way more alike—developmentally, socially, cognitively—than 37-year-olds, who are way more alike than 67-year-olds, and so on."
Another common misconception, suggests Ashton, is that old people are incompetent and not interested in new things. Ashton adds: "We are bombarded by negative messages about age and aging, from childhood on, starting with children's books and Disney movies. And if we don't stop to question them, they become part of our identity." She acknowledges that aging people face real losses and have genuine things to worry about. "But we only hear the negative side of the story," she insists. "It's important to acknowledge the things that we gain and the ways that aging enriches our lives in addition to some of the fears, some of the losses, which—likewise—are different for each of us."
A third myth is that we become less happy as we get older. In fact, says Ashton, people are happiest at the beginning and the end of their lives. They get better at not sweating the small stuff. She cites a Stanford Longevity Centre study, which was launched just before the start of the pandemic, that found that older people, despite being more isolated and at greater risk of dying from COVID, were more resilient "simply because they had lived through more stuff and it was easier to imagine getting through it."
Among the more positive things about aging is the idea that, as people get older, their anxiety about dying decreases. Though older people don't want to die, and certainly don't want to die in pain, they don't think about death a lot. They live in the present "as a conscious choice." They're also more careful about how they spend their time and with whom they spend it.
Through her research, Ashton has found that the most important component of aging well is not health or money. It's having a solid social network. She advises listeners to have more friends who are younger than they are. "If we have more younger friends," she states, "we remember how hard it is to be young. It's easy to forget that."
Ashton recognizes the downsides of getting older, but insists that they are limited to these two: "people you've known all your life are going to die, and some part of your body is going to fall apart." In the case of the latter, she points out: "We may not be able to do all the things we used to do in the same way that we did them when we were young, but we can do some versions of them, if they're important to us."
My friend shared this episode of Glennon's podcast with me after reading my post on the secrets of happy people, in which I state that "some of my best days are ahead of me." Indeed, I find a lot of parallels between aging and cancer.
We cancer patients are a diverse lot: some of us see it as an unfortunate occurrence but not the end of the world, while others see it as a death sentence.
We are bombarded by images and messages that focus on what cancer takes away but rarely on how cancer enriches our lives—deepening our relationships, helping us see what's really important in life, and spurring us to become more empathic.
Some of us—particularly those with cancers that are incurable or that commonly recur—do get better at living in the moment. We know the potential downsides, but we live in the present "as a conscious choice."
We rely on our social networks to help get us through. And, if we're lucky, we expand them.
Cancer and its treatment can damage our bodies—sometimes temporarily, other times permanently—making it harder to do what we did previously, but we can often do something similar in a new way or discover something completely novel.
I believe that surviving cancer makes many of us more resilient. It can be easier to imagine getting through something equally tough once we've made it through cancer treatment.
For my part, the most important thing I've learned about cancer is that it's possible to face the disease and still find joy, happiness and connection. I expect that it will be the same as I continue to age.
