Welcome and Setup
David Lowry: Welcome to the Fifth Season Podcast on Successful Aging. Hello everyone. I’m David Lowry, and today I am joined by my friend and colleague, Don Drew. Don, we believe aging is a privilege, and we wanna have conversations on how to do it well.
Don: It is a privilege, David, and I’m pleased to be here to talk about it.
Ageism and Cultural Scripts
Don: I wanted to start today, really, with something that happened to me recently. Someone looked at me and said, ” You know, with a particular kind of combination of concern and pity, where they say. Well, at your age, and something rose up inside of me that I can only describe as equal parts defiance and clarity.
David Lowry: Well, I know that at your age is actually a little bit of ageism, isn’t it?
Don: It is.
David Lowry: Look, I’ve received that look.
Don: And here’s what I’ve come to realize. The older I get, the more I understand that so many of the so-called rules of aging are less about wisdom and more about expectation. They’re scripts written by a culture that genuinely doesn’t know what to do with people who refuse to fade gracefully into the background.
David Lowry: I know it’s like society has this idea of how people are supposed to behave at our age, whatever our age is. And I’m not telling just yet. Hey, who gave them the right to do that? Today, we’re gonna pull those scripts apart one by one. And I don’t know, we may have to put on a song that says we’re not gonna take it anymore.
Don: Right, David. We’re not gonna take it anymore. We’ve been writing about this, we’ve been thinking about it. We’ve been living it, and today we wanna talk about the rules of aging that we’ve decided just to break, and why we think the act of breaking them might actually be one of the most important things any of us can do for our own health, our identity, and even our sense of aliveness.
David Lowry: I think everybody’s going to enjoy this conversation, Don, because it’s going to connect so much of what we’ve been exploring over the last several weeks. And we’ve talked about stepping out of our producer identities, about quieting the mental noises and what the science of health span is telling us. But today we’re going to bring it home in a very personal, very real way. I think everybody’s gonna get something outta this.
Don: So if you’ve ever been told to dress your age, act your age. Stop learning new things, leave adventure to the young, or just suffer your body’s changes in dignified silence. This episode is for you.
David Lowry: Okay, let the games begin.
Where Rules Come From
David Lowry: Let’s talk about where these rules come from in the first place.
Don, I’ve decided before we get to the specific rules that you’ve decided to break, and hey, I just want you to know I’m right here behind you. I’ve lit a torch. I’m standing right behind you. I wanna ask something pretty foundational. Where do you think these rules come from anyway? Who wrote them? Who decided all of this?
Don: That’s a great question, isn’t it? You know, I, I really have thought about this a lot, and I, I don’t think they come from any single space or place. They come from a kind of cultural sediment that’s accumulated over years, centuries even, and from messages from our parents in our day, from advertising, from the medical establishment, and from pop culture. So it’s just all sort of piled up until, after a while, they begin to feel like the truth. But in reality, they are all generated from what you and I have been talking about when we refer to the socialized self or identity. It’s what’s governed most of our decisions and actions in the first half of our lives.
David Lowry: I know, and some people treat these rules like it’s the law of gravity or something.
Don: Yeah. And the insidious thing is that most of these rules are delivered with genuine care. People don’t mean to be rude or to treat us poorly. But the person who told me that a certain t-shirt with logos on it was too young for me wasn’t trying to diminish me. They, they thought they were helping me. They thought they were educating me on how I should be dressed to be acceptable.
David Lowry: Sure. And you know, I’ve had the same thing happen where people say, now this suit will really go well with your gray hair or with your age group, you’re really going to look the part of the gentleman of your age. But really, the effect is the same regardless of the intent. The effect is the same.
Don: Yeah. And the effect is a door closing. Okay? And the more doors that close, the smaller our world seems to get. And the smaller our world gets. And, I really believe this, actually, the faster you age, you know, when you start shutting yourself off from life, you speed up the aging process in some pretty tangible ways.
David Lowry: I believe you’re onto something, and there is actual science behind the idea that engagement, novelty, and challenge have a measurable effect on how our cells are going to age. Think about that. Just engagement, novelty, and challenge affect how your cells age. We’ve talked about health span on our show last week, and that’s the number of years we live in actual, good health with full function, cognitive sharpness, and the ability to do what matters to us. And the research is pretty detailed that the behaviors that protect health span aren’t passive behaviors where you just sit in the old chair. They require a kind of active, ongoing refusal to stop shrinking away,
Don: So, breaking the rules of aging isn’t just rebellious. It might actually be biological self-defense.
David Lowry: Biological self-defense. I love that. Today, we’re gonna look at a few rules of aging and whether they’re working for us. Alright, Don, are you ready?
Rule 1: Dress Your Age
David Lowry: I got my little drum roll out for rule number one: dress your age.
Don: Dress your age. It sounds trivial at the start, but actually, after you sit with it a little bit, it’s a problem. Okay? That is Dress your age,
David Lowry: What does that even mean?
Don: Well, I was told at one point in my fifties that certain colors were too young for me, that t-shirts with logos weren’t appropriate anymore or that I shouldn’t wear shorts, and by the,
David Lowry: Forbid you to wear the yeah. Well, see a white leg or something,
Don: And by the way, our listeners need to know that David is a generally snappier dresser than I am. When I was young, one of my deciding factors in my career was that I didn’t want a job where I had to wear a tie all the time, and I’m still sticking to that one. The advice was well-meaning, but I was given advice about shorts and shirts and so on, but it landed like a door being closed.
David Lowry: Sure. And that doesn’t mean all the time. There are times when you need to dress up, and times when you need to wear whatever makes you feel comfortable. But there’s something really worth talking about here because clothing is not a superficial thing. The way we dress is another intimate form of self-expression. It communicates something about who we are, or at least what we believe ourselves to be.
Don: And the moment we start dressing to avoid commentary rather than to express ourselves, we start performing a version of ourselves that’s designed for other people’s comfort. In the words of our guest, Dr. Charles Rix, we’re self-editing.
David Lowry: And I think that habit, once it starts, doesn’t stay in the closet. It bleeds out to everything you do, the conversations you don’t have, the opinions you soften, the adventures you talk yourself out of. I mean, you don’t wanna do that.
Don: What I’m really saying is this: your clothing, your self-expression, your visible presence in the world, all matter. It’s not vanity,It’s your identity. And identity is something worth protecting at any age. Aging fully rather than aging invisibly. That’s the goal.
David Lowry: Okay.
Rule 2: Keep Learning
David Lowry: Time now for rule number two, which has to do with stopping the learning of new things. I wanna talk about this rule because it’s something we both lived out in a very tangible way. Don and I are professors, and we’re going to fight this one tooth and nail
Don: We really have David. There’s a persistent myth that our brains are essentially closed to further development after a certain age, that learning new skills is for the young, and that the rest of us should coast on accumulated knowledge. In my experience building graduate programs, I learned that many older adult learners are afraid to return to school because they worry they won’t be able to keep up with younger students. The truth is that’s just generally wrong.
We all fall prey to what I call Old Dog’s New Tricks Syndrome, and it’s completely wrong. I know this because when you and I started this podcast, I was 65 years old, and I did not know which end of a microphone to use.
David Lowry: Well, you definitely know which end of the microphone to use now, you’re doing a great job.
Don: Well, you know, I mean, it, I, I had no frame of reference for any of this. The technology, the production, the whole concept of building an audience through audio storytelling. It was entirely foreign to me. And something happened in my brain during that learning process that I can only describe as growth, genuine, surprising, invigorating growth.
David Lowry: Yes. Growth is a real thing, and science supports exactly what you felt. It’s called neuroplasticity. I love that word. Neuroplasticity is really how you’re supposed to say it. The brain’s ability to form new connections to reorganize itself and respond to new challenges. And it doesn’t go away with age, the way we’ve been led to believe, because the brain remains plastic and responsive and capable of real change all across your lifespan. The point is the process itself; it’s a challenge, it’s an engagement. And what charges all of that cellular regeneration, and we talked about this in previous episodes. It triggers the neurological and physiological renewals that happen at the cellular level. We call that health span.
Don: So learning new things isn’t a luxury reserved for the young. It’s an act of defiance against decline. And I intend to keep committing to it. For anyone watching our video broadcast on YouTube, you’ll often see the sign behind David in his office that says, I’m still learning. And every time I see that, I smile because I know how true that is about you, David.
David Lowry: I am still learning, and I tell people I am trainable. I especially tell that to my wife,
Don: Yeah.
David Lowry: I think there’s something important to say here about perfectionism and ego because one of the things that stops older people from learning new things is the fear of being bad at something and maybe thinking, oh, that person’s just too old to do this. When you’re younger, being a beginner feels natural. When you’re older, it takes a bit of humility to do those things.
Don: And that’s a trap, okay? Because the moment you decide you can only do things you’re already good at, you’ve essentially stopped growing. And the moment you stop growing, I think at some level you start dying.
David Lowry: Well, let’s go to rule number three.
Rule 3: Talk About Body
David Lowry: Don’t talk about your body
Don: We were catching up with some old friends here last week, and I think most of our discussion that night was a cataloging of some of the physical stuff we’ve got going on and so on, because we’re all sort of surprised by it But in reality, this is really a fascinating one to unpack because there are actually two versions of this rule that trap people in completely opposite ways.
David Lowry: Keep on. I wanna hear more about that.
Don: On one side, there’s the stoic version. Suffer in dignified silence. Don’t trouble anyone with your ailments, your limitations, your changing physical realities. Just manage it quietly and move on. On the other side, there’s the opposite trap. Talk about nothing but your ailments. Become a walking medical update that causes younger people’s eyes to glaze over.
David Lowry: I’ve seen that person, I’ve talked to that person. I hope I don’t become that person.
Don: Right, and you know, unfortunately, I’ve sometimes been that person at dinner myself. Okay? True confessions. But I reject both extremes. I talk about my body honestly because it is genuinely fascinating and interesting at times. But as I grow older, I’ve become an advocate for my own health in ways I never was when I was younger, and simply took my body entirely for granted.
David Lowry: That’s a good way of looking at it. And I think that we have to learn how to be good advocates. What do you think that looks like in practice?
Don: Okay, so I ask my doctors hard questions. I seek second opinions. I do my own research. One of the wonderful things about living today is we can do our own research in a lot of ways and educate ourselves. I push back when something doesn’t feel right. I pay attention in a way that my younger self never did because my younger self assumed the body would just handle things, and mostly it did. But that was luck as much as anything else.
David Lowry: I think there’s a real generational dimension for this, especially for men. The generation I grew up in, Don, did not encourage body awareness or health literacy in men. The idea was to work hard and then just push through it. You know, no pain, no gain. Then, if something broke, you just dealt with it
Don: Yeah, that’s a view of the body as a tool rather than a, a garden that needs tending.
David Lowry: And what we are saying right now is that the garden metaphor isn’t just poetic. It’s really accurate. As we age, we need to think of our bodies more as something that we tend. If you are thinking of it as a tool, you’ll either neglect it or use it until it breaks. But if you’re a garden. You will tend to it slowly, and if you don’t do that, though, it’s very hard to reverse what’s going to happen to you.
Don: My body has carried me through decades of living, and it deserves my attention. It deserves my advocacy and my respect, not my silence, nor my obsessive monologue at dinner, either.
David Lowry: There’s a middle path that you need to take. You need to be honest and engaged and you know, if your kids ask you to do something that you honestly can’t do, you need to own that. But then you shouldn’t hide either and try to get outta stuff just that you don’t wanna do and blame it on your body.
Rule 4: Adventure and Novelty
David Lowry: Let’s move on to rule number four about leaving adventure to the young folk. This is one I feel sort of personally involved with.
Don: Tell me why, David.
David Lowry: Well, I think one of the quietest losses that can happen as we age is the sense that the world is still open to us. And I know people who are afraid to get on an airplane and fly across the ocean, for instance. But honestly, there are still things out there we haven’t seen, places we haven’t been, and experiences waiting for us.
Don: The realistic view of it is that eventually, we’ll go from what they call the go, go to the slow go or the no-go period of life. And so a time is gonna come when we can’t. But we’re the ones that call the timing on that, as much as we can, we may be stopped by a medical situation or whatever, but it’s our life and our body.
So, at some point, we are supposed to prefer what’s familiar. That’s what we’re told. Okay, you’re supposed to be happy at home. The same restaurants, the same vacation spots, the same comfortable radius of existence. And some people actually, throughout their lives, have preferred that. But I don’t think that’s you or me, David.
David Lowry: It’s not everybody, and it’s. Really, if you are getting into a rut where you go to the same place all the time, you never change it or vary it up, you’re becoming a person who could be a little bit boring. And I understand the appeal for comfort, and really, I do. But there’s something wonderful about learning new things and new places and seeing the world through different eyes.
Don: Yeah, I recently stood at the edge of a cliff in Japan in 90-plus degree weather at 67 years old, and I felt as fully alive as I ever have.
David Lowry: Exactly. I know what it’s like to stand in Vienna, Austria and see it with eyes that, I know young people cannot see it, and that’s really a special time of life, Don. But I wanna be clear about what I mean when I think of adventure, because I’m not talking about like, extreme sports or, you know, jumping out backwards, out of an airplane and waiting till, you’re a hundred feet above the ground. Or any adventure that’s outside the boundaries of what you already are fearful of or something like that. But things like a new country, absolutly! Maybe new friendships. Yeah. Or if a romance is on the table. Yeah. Why not?
Don: I think what you’re talking about really is novelty, right? It’s about trying new things. It’s openness, it’s the willingness to be surprised. And I think that orientation toward the world, that expectation of something interesting might still be around the next corner, is itself protective. It’s protective against depression, against cognitive decline, against the particular kind of deadening that happens when we stop expecting life to surprise us.
David Lowry: Don, one of the wisest men I’ve ever known, told me when I was younger that he was giving me advice for my wife and me. He says, your wife should always have something to look forward to, like. You should have a trip to look forward to or go visiting the kids or a new restaurant or something. In other words, keep it fresh, keep the new things coming. And I think he was really right, but what he didn’t know is that there’s a lot of research on this, and it’s really clear.
Social engagement, novel experiences, and environmental complexity. These are really the most powerful predictors of your cognitive mental health as we age. So if some of you have been worrying about whether you might be experiencing a slight cognitive decline, start bringing these challenges in. You’re up for it. Don’t worry. Meet it. Head on. The brain needs input. It needs a challenge. And so if you’re worried about cognitive decline, give your brain a challenge. you it needs to feel like it’s navigating a world that’s still rich and unpredictable.
Don: The world is still full of things. I haven’t seen people I haven’t met, food I haven’t tasted. Age has not diminished my appetite for any of it, and I refuse to pretend it has.
David Lowry: Me too, and I want to encourage all of our listeners to give novelty a try.
Rule 5: Act Your Age
David Lowry: Alright, now to rule number five, and this is really one that we could have started the program with and just spent the whole topic on. It’s called Act Your Age.
Don: Act your age. Wow. You know, I’ve heard that my whole life, actually. Isn’t that grow up, act your age?
David Lowry: Some of us have been living there for a long time!
That’s probably the phrase all of us have heard, and it’s probably one of the most insidious phrases in the English language because what it implies is that there is a correct, prescribed way to inhabit whatever years of life you have left, and that you need to act maturely. You know, colors aren’t for you, and you can’t use certain kinds of words, and you can’t behave certain ways or go see certain things. And you have to laugh less, not be as silly, and have less wonder. Good grief, that sounds boring.
Don: Heaven knows I get angry about injustice. I still fall in love with ideas the way I did when I was in my twenties. None of that has aged out of me.
David Lowry: And why would it, why should it?
Don: You know, I, I have no intention of performing a more measured, more appropriate version of myself for anyone’s comfort. And I think there’s something we’re saying about what happens to people who do that, who gradually mute themselves until the performance becomes the person.
David Lowry: That’s right. And don’t let other people decide to silence you or to tell you what’s okay for you to talk about, what’s not okay to talk about. And sometimes we’re worried that we’re going to sound silly or embarrass ourselves because we don’t know all the hip lingo that everybody’s using these days. And that is, A bit of a risk, but so what? Identity is not a static thing. And we’re always becoming. The moment we stop allowing ourselves to become something new, the moment we accept a script of what we’re supposed to be at this age written by somebody who isn’t at this age, we’ve handed over something very essential about ourselves.
Don: So acting your age in the cultural sense, in a diminishing sense, isn’t just emotionally limiting. It might actually be physically harmful.
David Lowry: Biological self-defense again.
Don: Yeah, there it is again. And we’re going to need that on a t-shirt. Speaking of which, I will absolutely wear that t-shirt regardless of my age.
David Lowry: Hey, you know what? Maybe that should be the Official Fifth Season Podcast t-shirt right there. And Don, I, for one, would love to wear it.
One Rule to Keep
David Lowry: Well, here’s the only rule worth keeping right here. You wrote this beautifully in your Substack, Rewriting the Rules of Aging, and I want to give you some space to say it in your own words because after all these rules that you’ve been breaking, there’s only one rule you said that was worth keeping. So, okay, we’ve been knocking down the rules, but here’s one we want you to keep.
Don: Well, there certainly is, and it’s this. Stay present and pay attention. Pay attention to what your body needs. Pay attention to what brings you joy. Pay attention to who you are becoming. Everything else is negotiable.
David Lowry: Don, I would love to spend time on a show sometime, pay attention to what brings you joy. I think these can be some of the happiest years of our lives, these later Fifth season Years. They should be wonderful. They can be wonderful. And even if you’re going through trials and taking care of somebody, or life is kind of complicated for you, with all the learning you’ve had, you can find a way forward to joy despite all the things going on around you. So I think we are in the process of becoming.
Don: That process of becoming doesn’t stop. And I don’t care how old you are. We are always in process. We are always becoming, and the question is whether we are awake to it.
David Lowry: I think that’s a great slogan you created. Paying attention, stay present, and pay attention. Genuinely curious, non-judgemental attention, this is what we’re really talking about. That doesn’t happen automatically. That happens as you become, what shall I say, a true elder, where you’ve learned to pay attention and watch and see things with the eyes of all the experience you’ve acquired over the years, and it requires the consistency we’ve talked about in other contexts.
Don: And if we do these things regularly, if we do them daily, practice them daily, they may be undramatic and seemingly boring, but the truth is that they compound in ways that are really profound over time.
I’m not really interested in aging gracefully. If gracefully means aging invisibly. I am interested in aging fully with curiosity. Keep growing.
How to Break Rules
David Lowry: Well, let’s try to bring this home practically, because I think there are some people listening right now who feel what Don and I have been talking about. Maybe you’ve been handed one of those rules, or maybe the whole book of rules, recently, and felt kind of deflated.
Don: Or maybe our listeners have been handing these rules to themselves. That happens too you know. We internalize these scripts, and we become our own most efficient limiter.
David Lowry: Yeah, that’s what I found. And sometimes I find that when you say, “I’m not applying that to myself.” Another person may look at you with strange eyes or something like that. So what does that actually look like when you start breaking the rules? Don, where would you like to begin?
Don: I think you begin with noticing. Pay attention to where you’re contracting. Where are the places in your life where you’ve quietly stopped trying, stopped reaching, stopped expressing, because at some point it felt like you were supposed to? Where have you accepted a smaller version of yourself? And I,think really you have to pay attention again to use the phrase we used earlier. You have to pay attention to these things in your life. And be aware of them.
David Lowry: Yeah. Mindfulness is really important, and you start small, so you don’t have to do something outrageous unless you really want to, like flying to Paris tomorrow or something like that. And you don’t have to teach yourself Italian in five weeks. But you could step out of the boundaries of what you already know and see what happens. And you might be surprised at what’s new in your community that you have yet to explore.
Don: Right. Try the thing. Wear the thing. Say the thing. Ask hard questions. Book a trip. Pick up an instrument. Take a class and see what rises up inside when you do.
David Lowry: Don’t expect to be perfect when you try the new thing. And don’t necessarily expect that you’re going to enjoy everything about it. It’s, just something is going to rise up in you– something that’s been waiting for permission, and we want you to say yes. Say yes until you have to say no.
Don: And that rising, that particular combination of defiance and clarity I mentioned at the very beginning of our podcast, that is not rebellion for its own sake. That is your aliveness insisting on itself, and it deserves to be honored.
David Lowry: It deserves to be honored at any age.
Don: At any age.
David Lowry: Every person listening to this has had Act your age moment, be your age. If you haven’t, you will, but I hope when it comes, I hope you’ll remember there’s a choice in that moment. You can either accept the script that people are going to give you or maybe that you’ve been giving yourself, or you can the script down.
Closing and Call to Action
Don: We gave you our rules of aging. This week. Think about what rules of aging won’t work for you. Find us. Write to us, tell us what you’re breaking and what you’re building in its place.
David Lowry: You rule breakers out there. We’re ready to hear you. Some of you grew up in the sixties, breaking a lot of rules. Now it’s time to get back into the habit.
But we believe aging is a privilege. And a privilege deserves to be lived with intention and curiosity and with the colors can bring to it.
And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Fifth Season wherever you get your podcast. And share this podcast with someone in your life who might need to challenge a few rules. And as always, we believe aging is a privilege and our job is to do it. Well.
We’ll see you next week.