Who wants to live by the numbers?

In a recent article in The Atlantic, Arthur Brooks overheard an elderly man complain to his wife that no one needs him anymore and he wished he were dead! What? He wants to be dead? Brooks recognized the man as a world-famous celebrity in his mid-eighties with many past accomplishments. What was going on?

Degrees of Happiness

To satisfy his curiosity, Brooks started researching studies on the degree of happiness – satisfaction – with  age in successful professionals. Dean Keith Simonton, an expert on trajectories of creative careers, found that productivity increased the first 20 years and started declining thereafter. That meant start your career at 30 and prepare for decline after 50, or somewhere around then.

Oh my god, I’m in deep trouble. I continued doing science research until I was 69 and then stepped into a writing career. That wouldn’t be so bad, Brooks says, if I wasn’t too ambitious or expect to be successful anymore. Those days are gone, he says. The creative individuals do their best work in their 30s and 40s. Sorry. It’s the younger generation that have the creative spark.

But I’m going on 80 and still ambitiously building a career as a writer. Help!

Does Creativity Really Diminish With Age?

Don’t misunderstand me. We all slow down with the years until plain old age or illness puts the brakes on, and ultimately death puts an end to the decline. Brooks gives some careers a bit more time before the big decline sets in. Professors, teachers, historians – careers that depend on accumulated knowledge rather than creativity – are considered exceptions. These careers use “crystallized intelligence,” namely the ability use knowledge gained in the past. They don’t require “liquid intelligence,” the ability to reason, analyze and solve novel problems. (I guess professors and historians don’t need to reason or solve problems.) If you’re in one of those careers you might be able to keep going until sixty or so, and maybe even older for the lucky ones.

Brooks says, “the biggest mistake successful people make is attempting to sustain peak accomplishment indefinitely, trying to make use of the kind of liquid intelligence that begins fading relatively early in life.”

Stages Toward Happiness?!

What’s the solution? Be miserable watching the decline? No! Definitely not! Bow out when approaching 50 or thereabouts, stop competing, become spiritual, and don’t wait! Stop even if you’re still successful, or at least slow down, because statistics prove that you’re about to decline and won’t be able to be creative (not your fault). You’ll be depressed and unhappy. Don’t let that happen! Stay happy: drop that heavy ball and grasp a softer, more caring lifestyle – teach at the periphery and wait in peace for the grim reaper.

Brooks consulted a wise Hindu dedicated to helping others, who espoused four stages of life. The first stage was youth and learning; then, midlife, building a career, accumulating wealth and creating a family; next, the third stage, at about the ignominious 50, “retire into the forest,”, i.e., focus less on ambition and become devoted to spirituality, service and wisdom; and finally, stage four, become totally dedicated to the fruits of enlightenment, which means “resist the conventional lures of success in order to focus on more transcendentally important things.”

In other words, live by the numbers and stay inside the lines.

My Philosophy: Defy the Decline

I recognize some wisdom and good advice in what Brooks says, perhaps the best being don’t let success determine your happiness (although that suffers from the conundrum of defining abstract success for yourself). And Brooks isn’t the first to suggest pulling out of the so-called “rat race” with age, to retreat as it were, to simplify. Begin so-called “Swedish death cleaning” around 60 is another way to look it, which means rid yourself of unnecessary possessions, downsize, reduce stress. Yes, but when? I prefer choosing the lifestyle that keeps me engaged, health permitting of course, a way of life that makes my adrenalin flow. Yes, even be ambitious, have goals. Rather than my picking an age to change, I opt to give life a chance to choose the age for me to slide down the ominous decline.

I don’t like the idea of a “premature death,” as I call it. I hope to draw the lines of my creativity, not live within them.