Unexpected happiness as we age

Transcribed using Sonix. Please check against audio recording for absolute accuracy.

Katharine Esty: [00:00:01] People, today, if you talk to them, they still dread getting older, you know, I don’t think anybody, they start at age 30 and they they mourn their birthdays more, Oh my God, I’m 30, you know? Oh my God, I’m 40. They’re mourning every decade.

Peter Bowes: [00:00:21] Hello again, and welcome to the Live Long and Master Aging podcast. I’m Peter Bowes. This is where we explore the science and stories behind human longevity. Now, aging is often portrayed in a negative light. Ill health, loneliness, financial problems. The loss of loved ones. All valid issues. But why is it that numerous studies have shown that people in their 60s and beyond often say they’re happier than they’ve ever been? My guest today from her home just outside the US city of Boston is Katharine Esty, a practicing psychologist and author of Eighty Somethings A Practical Guide to Letting Go, Aging Well and Finding Unexpected Happiness. A book which really challenges the stereotypes about the lives of older people. Katharine, welcome to the Live Long and Master Aging podcast.

Katharine Esty: [00:01:14] Well, thank you very much, Peter. I am absolutely delighted to be here and getting to talk about happiness and other subjects about aging today.

Peter Bowes: [00:01:24] Excellent. And I’m delighted to talk to you as well. You’re in your mid-80s right now.

Katharine Esty: [00:01:29] Well, not quite mid. I’m a over mid. I’m 87 years old. And so I guess that’s I think that’s late. I don’t know. It still may. Maybe it’s mid-80s. We’ll call it mid-80s.

Peter Bowes: [00:01:40] Well, I think the whole point of this is it doesn’t really matter. And you have clearly a lifetime of wisdom to share. And I’m curious to start with your book’s subtitle, A Practical Guide to Letting Go. What are you letting go of?

Katharine Esty: [00:01:56] Well, I think that’s the part that most people don’t get, so it’s a really good question because I think what we have to let go of is the kind of bit by bit as we age, you have to let go of something like you have to let go of running, you know, your knees can’t run or you have to let go of. You can’t don’t really want to go to Europe any longer you want. You can’t really entertain your 25 family people and make homemade pies for them all. You gradually get a series of losses, small and large, and that you have to let go of them and kind of leave them behind. You have to grieve them. You have to pay attention to them. You can’t. Some people just stoically keep doing things and think, but then they, you know, fall down. They can’t really do it. So it’s kind of noticing what you can do, what you can’t do and pay attention to what you can do and and not getting a feeling, you know, kind of making your peace with them. So that’s the letting go. And it’s a hard work. And it’s not just a one time only.

Peter Bowes: [00:03:06] So it’s a very practical piece of advice. It’s letting go as you’ve beautifully explained of those things that it just isn’t realistic anymore to do. 

Katharine Esty: [00:03:16] Right.And they happen over time. And suddenly you realize that, you know, I went to a Zumba class today. I don’t know if that I know that it’s a very active dance, and I left after 40 minutes. I could have stayed, but I was tired, you know? And so I feel, Oh, that’s that’s that’s wise, you know? And so I sort of patted myself on the back.

Peter Bowes: [00:03:37] I was going to say 40 minutes of that class. You must have left feeling pretty good.

Katharine Esty: [00:03:40] I did. I did.

Peter Bowes: [00:03:42] Let’s delve into all of that then in a little bit more detail. But first of all, let’s just go back a few decades and talk about your life and really how you got to this point. Let’s talk about your career, and I suppose what evolved in your mind in terms of your interest in this area of longevity?

Katharine Esty: [00:04:00] Yes. Well, my parents did not have longevity. I mean, they weren’t didn’t have early deaths, but they were both gone by. My mother died at 76 and my father at 72. So but my life, I was one of those people of the generation that grew up. I didn’t have much of a focus on career or work, but then when I graduated from college and started teaching, I thought, Oh, well, this is really fun, working. And so I edged into abandoning teaching and deciding I really wanted to be something that was somehow more. I got interested in people in the classroom and I wanted to know more, and they started telling me their stories and I wanted to help them. And I realized I didn’t have training. So I went to social work school and became a psychotherapist. And then, after doing psychotherapy for a while, some women, I went back and got my Ph.D. in social psychology. Because I came, they came in. Interested in, you know, the societal issues as well as individual issues, and I wanted to really change organizations, I’ve been trying to change things my whole life and make them better. So with the Ph.D. in hand, I worked in a consulting firm and then after a couple of years, two women and I started our own firm where I was the principal at one of the principal managers, one of the three of us for 20 years. And then I retired from that and went back to psychotherapy. But at this point, I’m now around 70. I started. I had written books along the way. I wrote it when I was in my 30s. I wrote a book about gypsies. When I was in my consulting time, I wrote a book with some other folks on diversity. I wrote a, I traveled with my consulting to Bangladesh and met a guy I really admired who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Mohammed Yunus. I wrote a book about him. And then as I started aging myself when I was 80, I had a real aha moment. I was going along, doing everything, saying yes to a lot of things writing books, having a, you know, it was a private practice. But one day I was went on a small hike with my some of my family and this mountain I climbed. It was like an hour and a half hike up I’ve done for years. I just couldn’t do it, and I was with a lot of my grandkids and a couple of my sons, and I just said, I can’t go up with the last half hour. I just I had fallen once and got really out of breath, so I sat on a stump and it was like my aha moment. I said, I guess I’m getting old and it was. I kind of had to make my peace with it, and I was in a funk because I hadn’t made my peace with it. So at one point I decided, Well, somebody must know how to do live as you’re 80. So I thought, Well, as a social worker, I know how to interview people. So I started interviewing people first in my retirement community, then all over the country, and we’re finding out what is it like really to be in your 80s? And I only interviewed people in their 80s because nobody had written about that. They’d lumped people 65 to 100 all together in one big category called old or older. And so I found out a lot of interesting things. The first was my biggest finding was and you sort of hinted at it in your introduction was that most people are the great big majority of people in their 80s are find themselves happy and they never looked forward, thought they’d ever be happy. So it’s unexpected happiness. Most of them didn’t. Many of them didn’t think they’d get there to 80. You know, the their parents died or they never thought and then they never thought they’d be enjoying their life. And of course, there are people I’m not talking to people in poverty. There’s, you know, there are people. It’s not easy to be old and poor. 

Peter Bowes: [00:08:05] Right.

Katharine Esty: [00:08:05] So most of the people I did there, some of them were in nursing homes and some of them and some of them were not happy. I mean, I tried not to just be blinding my eyes to the real realities of the world, but my people, you know, I asked every one of them on a scale of one to ten, how happy do you feel? Ten being very, very happy and one miserable and most everybody. There were just about five or six that were below a seven, you know? Most of the people were eight nines and tens, and the science bears that out with what I got doing research that people, it turns out that when you’re in your 80s, you’re happier than people in the 70s. And interestingly enough, the people in their 70s are happy, happier than the people in their 60s. They now call it a U-shaped because people, if the’re young they are happy. But you get to 30 and you’re miserable, you’re too busy, and then it doesn’t get better until you’re start getting better till about the 50s.

Peter Bowes: [00:09:04] That’s really interesting. I’m just I’m really interested. You say you had that aha moment at the age of 80, when you were younger, when you were much younger? What was your attitude towards growing old? Were you the typical kind of person who thought almost thought, I’m going to live forever? I can do everything, and I don’t really need to think about what it’s going to be like when I’m 60, 70, 80 or even 90 years old. Did you just have that sort of gusto about life that getting really old didn’t occur to you?

Katharine Esty: [00:09:35] Well, it did occur to me because I had had some grandparents and I did have a lot of good energy myself. But what I saw, old old age was like, I didn’t want to get old at all because I had two grandparents that I had a grandfather that spent 10 years in bed with a stroke, which they would never do now, and a grandmother who broke her hip and she also spent years in bed. And then one grandparent was dead, I never saw him, so that didn’t look. He never he never made it. And then I had one grandmother that it was looked like a pretty good life. But you know, she had a rose garden and she drove a car around and went to Florida and she was looked like. But basically, I was like the people that thought, I don’t want to get there, ever. So I wasn’t it didn’t look like, you know, some people, you know, are very fond of their old people and they just, you know, have really… So I never was really close to any, and I certainly dreaded it along with everybody else.

Peter Bowes: [00:10:35] So what you’ve just beautifully described really is the difference between healthspan and lifespan and healthspan, we talk about it a lot on this podcast – aspiring to get to a great age, but maintain our physical health, our mental health and to be able to assimilate with society, to enjoy life as opposed to lifespan, which is just essentially being alive in the heart beating. But as you’ve just described, it could be ill health for a decade or the final few years of life. 

Katharine Esty: [00:11:03] Right? And now, of course, I’m very invested in because as I came to do this work on interviewing people, I interviewed 128 people for my book. And as I was interviewing it, first of all, my funk went away because I had a purpose now. I was like invested in this research project and then I was so excited by the kind of what I was seeing people doing and the kind of lives they were leading and doing wonderful things, you know, like that, all kinds of things. And suddenly I had to do a gradual revision of my thoughts. And in the more I people I talked to, the more possibilities I saw for myself. And, you know, I quickly got over my sort of depressed mood about aging and got on to feeling that I had something really important that I was discovering. And it seemed to me most people were still clinging to all the negative stereotypes about aging and really didn’t realize how an aging had changed since their grandparents day and went how it was different. They were still thinking of aging as decline and and loss, which is there are some loss and some decline. But there’s so much else going on today for people in their 70s and 80s.

Peter Bowes: [00:12:22] And I think you really hit the nail on the head. Talking about purpose and purpose in living and purpose in life, that it can almost now – and I’d be interested to know if there’s any science to back this up that when you have purpose it almost as you… I think you’ve just described this, it makes any other problems go away, whether it is a depression issue or whether it’s almost a physical problem that I think we’ve all experienced this. You might have an ache and pain and then you get engrossed in something, and all of a sudden the aches and pains disappear,

Katharine Esty: [00:12:53] Right. If you’re busy with it, you don’t even feel them. I especially I’ve learned that. I mean, I learned it to an over degree. I’d go to work when I was feeling terrible because I knew that once I got there, I’d just be, you know, it, my sickness. Whatever bad feeling I had would fly out the door. But for me, you know, I think the how the place that where I learned this for sure, this importance of purpose was started with Victor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. He was somebody. You may know this story, but he was in Auschwitz and was in…was writing, taking notes and thinking about what he was seeing and what he learned in that death camp was that it wasn’t the strongest bodies that survived. It wasn’t the the hunk’s. It was really. And he saw this. It just surprised him so much. It was people that had something that they wanted to live for. They had a purpose for surviving. They either wanted to be back with their families, their wives, or they wanted to build their home, or they wanted to write a book or they wanted to get the story out about Auschwitz. They wanted to get the truth out. They were concerned about justice, but once they had a purpose, no matter, they were so much more apt to survive this horrible camp, then people that didn’t really know why. That couldn’t really say why survived, why they should survive. And so that is kind of a story that sticks in my mind. And then I’ve gone on and seen from my own research and from other people’s research how true it is that the really critical nature of having a purpose.

Peter Bowes: [00:14:43] Just going back to those people that you interviewed in their 80s and the overwhelming majority of them saying that they were a seven, eight or nine in terms of their happiness, what were their reasons? Did they explain to you what the main things in their lives were? That were giving them happiness.

Katharine Esty: [00:15:01] Well, I think it was they would describe the purpose I found, for instance, you know, one woman told me how it was her grandchildren that gave her a focus in her life, and she had something like, I think she had six grandchildren and she wanted to be part of their lives. And she said it was very important for her. She wanted them to took a lot of interest in their growth and development, but also in their continuation as a family. And she knew if she didn’t bring them all together, they would they would. They were spread out all over the country. So that became her avocation of bringing the family together and as well as helping some of the kids that needed help with their education there. And that so that was her. Other people, you know, I had one person that was painting and they had started watercolors and they had been a professor. But then they when they turned about 65, they started doing these beautiful watercolors and they would became, you know, went to painting classes and weren’t painting groups and show their work. And it was just a focus of trying to express the world that they saw. And and the purpose was to to paint it as it was, to them. Some people take their do, take their purpose, becomes their physical well-being and they go to fitness and they there’s we see that type all the time of people that go to the exercise and do everything you know are concerned about their diet and their sleep, and that can become a purpose for some. I think that isn’t as motivating, but they’re certainly seeing that happen to a lot of people.

Peter Bowes: [00:16:53] I think exercise can be obviously both physically beneficial, but there’s a huge mental side of exercise as well, and in part, it might be the endorphins that are released when you’re exercising. But in terms of achievement and perhaps seeing a change in your body and muscular strength is all important as you’re growing older. But I know a lot of people my age, I’m approaching 60 who might be actually starting serious exercise for the first time, and they notice how their physical strength can actually very significantly improve, and that improves their mental wellbeing as well. 

Katharine Esty: [00:17:30] Right? And then it leaves you energy to do some other things. I mean, and other people that I interviewed one guy was his life purpose was the union. And he continued after he retired from his job, just helping the union to organize in his Midwestern town. And so he was. And many people today, I think, are taking climate change. They realize that the world needs people to really put that cause above and make it their highest priority. So I met a number of people that were working on very various aspects. They might be helping one organization like the Sierra Club, or they might be working on just raising money for more global issues. And but that is drawing a lot of people, I think.

Peter Bowes: [00:18:15] What would you say to people in their, let’s say, their 40s, their 50s? Maybe they’re in their early 60s, they’re approaching retirement. And I know for a lot of people, retirement is that moment of dread in their lives because they’re giving up what they’ve always done and they really can’t figure out what’s coming next. They’re afraid of being older and infirm and maybe lonely eventually. And I know a lot of people kind of get locked in that almost that dark hole of just the unknown of what aging brings. So with your experience, what would you say to those people in that sort of mid-age range?

Katharine Esty: [00:18:52] Well, for one thing, I think they should listen to their own intuition, and I know that’s what I had to do. You know, when I turned well, I all along when I went to a financial adviser in my 30s, he said to me, When do you think he’ll retire? And I said 85, and he laughed and my husband said, 65 when my husband actually retired at 62 and you know, when I retired, it was four days ago. On Thursday, I ented my psychotherapy practice. So it was a big week for me. This was last week I actually closed it down. And so I was I didn’t end my career, but I think at 85, I ended it at 87. But the formal career, but now I have a writing career as well.

Peter Bowes: [00:19:41] So when I when I described you at the beginning as a practicing psychotherapist, that has just ended. But I guess in many senses you’re always going to be practicing the art of what you’ve known.

Katharine Esty: [00:19:51] I still have a few details to do, so you could say it’s not going to be closing, but I do think it’s listening to. There’s so many stereotypes, and one of them is that you should retire at 65 or you should retire, and I think people have got to find find their own pathways and that’s what I would encourage them. Not so I didn’t listen to that. I should retire at 65. Nonsense. And I think that’s what everyone needs to do is take their own, listen to their own heart and listen to their own. What? And I loved. Of course, my private practice was like half time, but it was perfect and I felt I was contributing and it gave purpose to my life. So I would encourage everyone to realize that so many of the stereotypes about older people are just either misinformed or dead wrong. And things like we all grew up with thinking that we were told that if you have a drink, you’re going to lose a few brain cells and that we got this image of the brain cells flowing out of us with. We had a glass of wine, and if we just lived and that we could expect it. At 40, everything was downhill from 40 on and now the modern brain research tells us that the brain can keep growing. We can keep learning, we can heal our brains. If we say we are depressed over the brain, have a trauma. The brain has got this capacity. This thing called neuroplasticity, where you can heal yourself. So that’s one thing I think people that’s not widely understood how that should impact our wellbeing. We should know that our brains can last for years. So that’s one thing I’d want them to know. I’d want them to know you don’t have. We all know with modern medicine. But when you think about it with the knees and the hips and teeth getting taken care of and cataracts and better hearing aids, I think they’re just getting hearing aids that work for people. They’ve been a mess for years, but with all that modern medicine can do. You know, you can look forward to being in your 80s pain free. Not everybody, but most people and pain under control, pain free and active lives. And, you know, so that it’s just a but the word is still isn’t out that you know that this quality of having active lives pain free with pleasure and there’s unexpected happiness. People, today, if you talk to them, they still dread getting older. You know, I don’t think anybody, they start at age 30 and they they mourn their birthdays more. Oh my god, I’m 30, you know? Oh my God, I’m 40. You know, they’re mourning every every decade and not realizing that life can be so much fun and so wonderful and continue. And it’s not just this. You know, they would draw it like up to here to 40 and then down here like that down. That’s the way most people see it. Rather than that, you get here and you can go along and go along for a long time and then maybe, hopefully have a very quick, then it’s over.But. 

Peter Bowes: [00:22:58] That’s the goal for a lot of people, isn’t it? To keep going, keep going. And then, as you say, go quickly,

Katharine Esty: [00:23:03] Go quickly, right. 

Peter Bowes: [00:23:04] That would be the ideal. How big a problem in society do you think ageism is? I think ageism exists at all sorts of levels, at different stages in our lives, but especially as we’re getting beyond 50. People often refer to the over 50s as if it is a group that you don’t want to be in, that it is something that happens to you, that it is it is negative. And for all of the reasons that we’ve just been talking about how deep rooted is ageism in this world that we live in,

Katharine Esty: [00:23:34] Do you think? Well, I think it’s deep-rooted in this country. You know, I think there are other cultures. So I think it has been that we’re particularly unwelcoming to old age and have a culture that’s built around the idea that life is for the young and beautiful. And you know, I think we have ideas, you know, I’ve written about sex in the 70s and 80s. I think people are sexual their whole lives and but people kind of have made it that it shouldn’t, you know, should be sitting very quietly and doing your knitting and taking care of your grandchildren when you’re older. But I think so. I think we haven’t understood things and we have I think we are an atheist society. And I think what you see it in employment, I mean, people often are fearful women that are or men to it when they’re 50. Well, I don’t think I can get a new job, they say, because there’s so much easier when people want to hire young people. So it’s really tragic. I don’t think the whole world should be reorganized. There’s a book called Elder Hood. I don’t know if you know it by this woman, and she suggests that we should really restructure work so people don’t work so hard in their 30s, 40s and 50s, but have them continue into their 60s, 70s and 80s to kind of go down that we should space it out so that everybody has more leisure time and also the work that we should work our whole lives, and so I think our our culture is very problematic and I see it even in my retirement community here. I have a boyfriend that who is on a walker doesn’t, and there’s no chairs in this retirement community that he can get out of in in the, you know, in the lobby there, which is just crazy. But we have whole towns that aren’t set up. I mean, now there are some movements in our in America kind of age friendly communities. So it’s starting to happen, but only it’s weary. We’re in the initial stages of recognizing how our towns were built for people that died when they were sick in their 60s. And now we have this whole group of people that with longevity and we have the architects have to change it. The city planners have to change. You know, the work H.R. has to change the work requirements we still have are structuring our workplace. So there’s a lot to do Peter. 

Peter Bowes: [00:26:00] What’s your boyfriend’s name,

Katharine Esty: [00:26:01] Peter

Peter Bowes: [00:26:02] Peter? 

Katharine Esty: [00:26:02] His name is Peter. Just like yours.

Peter Bowes: [00:26:03] Oh, great. well, a great choice there.

Katharine Esty: [00:26:05] Yeah.

Peter Bowes: [00:26:06] Excellent. One of the problems for a lot of people is the interaction of the generations, and that can be children and their parents as their parents are getting older. You’ve talked about grandparents as well, and I think a lot of people don’t know how to approach that relationship, especially when it moves into perhaps a difficult stage. And I think for a lot of younger people, they don’t even begin to think about aging until they see it happening to their parents and grandparents. And I know there are moves in some societies to get more older people and younger people actually living together, whether it’s a a university dormitory or other kinds of accommodation where the generations are more closely living together, do you think that will be beneficial?

Katharine Esty: [00:26:52] I think it would, because I think and I think but I think what happens? I know there’s a retirement community near me – not mine – but they’re built right near a college campus and everybody is required to take one of the courses at the college. So they meet with young people and have one, you know, an experience. And so I think in other schools, most, you know, my grandkids are getting assignments to go find a person that was in World War Two. And, you know, I think people are making beginnings of that. But I think, you know, it isn’t a widespread and I found when I was writing the book that people did not know how to talk across the generations and often all too often the old people would. Older people would say to me, You know, my family even – they’ll invite me and greet me with hugs and kisses, but then they’ll plunk me in the corner. And after that wonderful, hearty welcome, I’m a kind of invisible. And so I’ve, you know in my book that I wrote 80 somethings about from all the research I did. I put in conversation starters and I also put tips for the family because I think people do not know how to. And so engage in this intergenerational conversation. And you know, they need some help, especially the adult children of somebody. When you’re 80, your children may be 60, 50,40 and they usually avoid all serious topics. They don’t know how to bring it up, or they don’t sometimes like if they’re worried about mom or dad dad still driving and he kind of is reckless on the road. They don’t know how to bring it up. So I think we really need a lot more aids and kind of helps to help people learn how to talk across this. And my book was meant as kind of an introduction for adult children into what it actually the inner experience of being old is like what it is that they sometimes don’t get, and they’re bewildered by their their parents. And somehow so they’re just kind of like, it’s an unchartered territory. And so we all need to inform ourselves more of what the actual world of old age is like. And and so my book is a great start for anyone. But it also was I wrote it for people in their 80s because some of them are oblivious to all this good. What I call the good news.

Peter Bowes: [00:29:23] Just in closing, I often ask people, perhaps people that are younger than you, what their plans and aspirations are for the decades ahead and how they see their future. I’m curious, how do you see your future? What are you looking forward to? Are there new projects you want to do?

Katharine Esty: [00:29:41] There are, and I just am writing an article for a paper, and the top editor said that I was very promising, which was hysterical to be promising at 87. But that’s where I’m going. I have been writing blogs and I. Don’t think I’ll write another book, but who knows? So I mean, I have that’s one thing I want to do, and I also like the woman that is involved with her grandkids. I am very invested in my own grandkids and I have ten of them. So that’s a lot of people right there, and I’m very cared to sort of stay close and spend time with them. And so that’s. But I also I’ve been writing these blogs at least once a month, and now I’m that I won’t be having the private practice and that my clients. I’m hoping they’ll have even more energy. And also I’m also hoping I’ve always been very busy, and I’m so I’m hoping I’ll learn the art of moving slowly and kind of being able to say no and and just having a little more space in my life. And and I’m also hoping to learn how to walk a little slower because I am always like people always say, Katharine, you’re moving so fast. And so I’m hoping that I’ll learn the art of moving slowly.

Peter Bowes: [00:31:08] That’s interesting. We did an episode of this podcast a little while ago that talked about the science behind the speed at which you walk, and the evidence is that people that walk faster tend to live longer.

Katharine Esty: [00:31:20] Oh, well, that’s good. More good news for me. I didn’t know that. That’s so thank you. That’s a good piece of news that is hilarious.

Peter Bowes: [00:31:27] You are living that life.

Katharine Esty: [00:31:28] Yes, I am doing well on that score, so.

[00:31:31] Well you’re doing – I think you’re doing well on on many, many scores. Katherine, this has been a wonderful conversation. Invigorating and very inspiring. Thank you very much indeed.

Katharine Esty: [00:31:40] Well, thank you because I’ve learned something too. I’ve enjoyed it. It’s been a lot of fun and it’s so interesting.

Peter Bowes: [00:31:47] Thank you so much. It really was a huge pleasure. And if you’d like to read Katharine’s book Eighty Somethings: A Practical Guide to letting go, Aging Well and Finding Unexpected Happiness. I’ll put the details into the show notes for this episode of the podcast. You’ll find them at our website Live Long and Master Aging – LLAMApodcast.com – And if you’re feeling invigorated by what Katharine has had to say, you might like to take a look at AMightyGoodTime.com, the website run by our friend Amy Temperley, a past guest on this podcast, A Mighty Good Time, is a one stop shop for events and activities for people who are over 50. It’s a great resource, and it’s also a link to our podcasts for which we’re grateful and well worth a look. LLAMA is a HealthSpan Media production will be back with another episode soon. In the meantime, do take care and thank you very much for listening.