Yesterday I read a fascinating anecdote in Robin Sharma’s book “The Everyday Hero Manifesto.” I’ll quote it at length

“In one of the most fascinating studies ever performed in the field of social psychology, eight men in their seventies were brought to a converted monastery that researchers had carefully set up to look exactly as things would have looked twenty-two years earlier. At the outset of the experiment, as the men entered the building, some were hunched over, while others used canes. Music of a bygone era played, magazines and books from that earlier time sat on the shelves, and artefacts from that previous age had been neatly organized so that it actually seemed that the participants had walked into a time warp. The leader of the study, maverick Harvard professor Ellen Langer, now heralded as “the mother of positive psychology,” instructed the men to think, feel, speak and act as if they were their younger selves of twenty-two years before. 

They were told to inhabit that previous period as if they were really back there. After five days at the monastery, a series of biomarkers of age were tested. Remarkably, the men looked younger, were physically more supple, showed improved manual dexterity and even had better eyesight. As they waited for the van that would return them to their homes, they participated in an intense game of touch football, shouting and hollering like teenagers. In studying the outcome of this striking trial, Langer concluded that the illusion that had been created as the participants stepped into their younger selves had caused a rewiring of their perceptions and a reworking of their self- identities. Rather than believing the cultural biases (and societal brainwashing) of how people in their seventies should perform, they shattered that story and grew younger. Because they saw themselves differently.”

For me, this passage really gets to the heart of what this project is about. “Rather than believing the cultural biases (and societal brainwashing) of how people in their seventies should perform, they shattered that story and grew younger.” Now I might quibble with the language: did they really “grow younger,” or did they just express being 70-something in a different way. Because when I think of being fitter by fifty, I’, not thinking of “being 30 at 50” or whatever. I’m thinking of being 50, or 55 or 60 and expressing a different set of possibilities of what being that age can mean. But anyway.

This morning I went and shot some hoops (mostly backboard and rims, rather than hoops, but whatever). I wanted to move, and felt a bit cold to go swimming. Thought about gong for a bike ride, but didn’t really feel like pumping up my tires. But I felt excited about the idea of playing basketball. And it was great. And I was reflecting on this study in Sharma’s book. I used to shoot hoops with friends a lot as a teenager. And I did feel a certain sense of ease and playfulness while on the basketball court this morning. A different vibe than when I go for a walk. When I was a kid or a teenager I would never “go for a walk.” Come to think of it, that was what old people did. I would walk plenty, but only to go to a friend’s house, go to the corner store, walk to school…etc. Walking was a means of getting somewhere, not something I would do for its own sake, basically like being on a treadmill but with better scenery. Anyway, I do love going for walks, especially in the woods (when it’s not mosquito season) or other beautiful locations. But I think part of being fitter by fifty will also be reviving more play and sports, done for the sake of fun, rather than “exercise.” As a kid, I was WAY more active than I am now, played sports all the time, but never “exercised.” In fact, I think that, probably, the very notion of “exercise” as an activity done for the sole purpose of moving your body and “getting healthy” or whatever, is probably antithetical to actually being healthy, moving, well, and having fun. Just look at kids. “Exercise” is a completely unknown concept, and yet they move all the time – joyfully and relentlessly. You can’t stop them. To the point that we label kids “hyperactive,” when they’re young and give them drugs to try to make them sit still for hours, and then when they’re adults tell them they need to “exercise.” How messed up is that?

Anyway I think I’m on to something here. My next post will be about food and eating, looking at it through a similar lens. See you then!