I said I would, and I remembered, to write about mental ageing as a follow-up on what I wrote two weeks ago about our physical wear and tear. So here goes ...
Mental ageing – even by natural means, if there is such a thing (there is) – is so serious, hectic and inevitable that you may as well take it with a pinch of salt. It’s the only way to cope with it. I’m not writing about intellectual disability or the reducing levels of IQ that characterise its advance. I’m also not writing about cognitive dysfunction and adaptive behaviours that accompany mental decay, or the aged-related chronic conditions which give rise to the geriatric syndromes to which they’re attached.
None of that. I’m just writing about getting old, in the normal course of things. Oh, and I’m writing all of this on behalf of a friend (whose name escapes me for now – though I’m sure it will come back to me soon).
The first signs are simple – like having to feel whether the toothbrush is still wet to know whether or not you’ve just brushed your teeth, or having to count the number (or remember the colours) of the pills you have to take every morning (just to be sure). Luckily, this happens in the privacy of your morning bathroom routine.
My friend’s been forgetting names for ages now – but that’s pretty common. I’ve even considered buying everyone labels. So do your mates a favour and remind them of the names of others when you’re in company – repeatedly, but subtly. You can only get away with “howzit boet” for so long. Don’t pretend you know. The hole you’re digging just gets deeper. And don’t get it wrong with anyone who you may have intersected with romantically – however you did so within that category, you know what I mean ... hell hath no fury like that of a woman forgotten.
The next level of forgetfulness, my friend tells me, is word recall. Not just any word, but the one best qualified to communicate the distilled essence of the sentence you’re in the middle of. The best example I can think of is … (give me a minute, it’ll come to me). In the meantime, my friend was trying to explain that a mutual friend hadn’t installed an inverter (a pretty common device amongst the can-affords), but clearly that device name had escaped him as he went on to talk about “one of those things you can have installed to get electricity when Eskom power is down – you know, when there’s a blackout, which happens when there’s a whatchamacallit”. (You know, right?)
In the early days of this occasional affliction (which strikes without warning) you can muddle through it as your brain figures out a gap-filler quickly enough for the pause to go unnoticed. People just think you’re a bit slow – but then you don’t even remember who they are.
No doubt though, at some point the pauses will be long and frequent enough to be noticed, or you’ll just grind to a halt mid-sentence. Who cares? We’ve all got enough friends at our age.
Worry not. There’s always AI, ChatGPT and @grok to turn to for an answer. Using these sources is a two-edged sword because their answers are found in the aggregation of data – a lowest common denominator pursuit – in the same way that popularity is the determinant of power, and that’s not working out so well.
I’m avoiding AI, as gym for my brain. The easier it is to get answers from touching a screen, the lazier your brain will become at finding out. Eventually original thought will be extinct, and then we’ll be in trouble.
I know AI is going to take over the entire world and control humans, but not me, if I can help it.
Bad news – it’s not going to get any better. Good news – you’ll care less and less.
Generally, though, of course technology is helping us oldies (as it’s helping the prematurely dumb AI-reliant youngies). I judge new technology not on how smart it is, but on how easy it is to use. If you need a manual, then they’ve got it wrong.
Superficial problem-solving capacity seems to diminish with age, but this doesn’t necessarily affect deep-dive thinking (abstract or otherwise). We add up numbers more slowly and less confidently, but we can still do differential calculus, work out the two-move checkmate, and hold our own in arguments, however intellectual, I reckon.
So, what are we to do?
Bad news – it’s not going to get any better. Good news – you’ll care less and less … but make sure that equilibrium is working for you. Be honest, at least with yourself – embracing and managing will yield a way better result than denial. Don’t succumb to substitutes of the real you (however easy AI is going to make that) and be yourself – regardless of how flawed or misunderstood you may be. Solace will only come from within you. Be among friends – they’re in the same space as you are. They understand and forgive.
Above all though, nourish a broad-based good sense of humour. All of this stuff has a funny side to it – find it – and laughter is, after all, the best medicine; that’s a proven fact, I think. One thing I know for sure is that grumpiness will kill you, and you’ll die alone.
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