{"id":10591,"date":"2024-12-29T23:04:26","date_gmt":"2024-12-29T23:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=10591"},"modified":"2025-04-23T14:52:23","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T14:52:23","slug":"putting-a-cap-on-eternal-youth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/29\/putting-a-cap-on-eternal-youth\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting a Cap on Eternal Youth"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Putting a Cap on Eternal Youth: Why Growing Up is Better Than the Alternative<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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In a world obsessed with youth and haunted by the passage of time, there’s a need to challenge the cultural dread of aging, to learn to celebrate its fruits of wisdom and liberation from the relentless chase of fleeting accomplishments.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Griffin Gooch<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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1.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I was only turning 27, but it felt like I was turning 40.<\/p>

Birthdays have always been hard to swallow. I remember once crying on the eve of my eighth birthday over the existential pain of no longer being seven. And yes, it felt as ridiculous then as it feels typing it now. But even at seven I noticed there was something painful about growing up. Every passing year added more seriousness, urgency, self-consciousness, anxiety, and expectations.<\/p>

I\u2019m not alone in this fear. In fact, \u201cbirthday blues\u201d have become so commonplace that some rallied to include it<\/a> in the DSM-5\u2019s list of mental health disorders. Birthday blues stem partly from gerascophobia,<\/em> the fear of growing old. \u201cAging\u201d is now a common response on those \u201cWhat are you most afraid of?\u201d surveys. Interestingly, aging sometimes ranks higher than death.<\/p>

I believe this fear stems from our milieu\u2019s attempts to cater itself toward and around young people\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 . A new wave of horror films\u2014like Old,<\/em> X, <\/em>or The Substance\u2014<\/em>use the throes of aging as the emotional mechanism behind their terror. Or just consider the ways it pervades our music: \u201cForever Young,\u201d \u201cWe Are Young,\u201d \u201cHere\u2019s to Never Growing Up.\u201d Another batch of songs reminisces lost youth: \u201cSpringsteen,\u201d \u201cStressed Out,\u201d or \u201cCloser\u201d (\u201cWe ain\u2019t never getting older<\/em>\u201d). All of which might seem harmless, but media has a much more powerful influence on our beliefs than we give it credit for. As the politician Andrew Fletcher wrote, \u201cIf I can write the songs of a nation, I care not who writes its laws.\u201d<\/p>

Youth obsession isn\u2019t just speculation either. Neuroscientist Sophie Scott found that when people are asked about the highlights of their lives, they invariably talk about their twenties. Even when she tried to nudge the conversations elsewhere or interview different age groups, youth was treated as their apex of significance. Such over-infatuation might be why we\u2019ve been called a \u201cfirst-half-of-life culture.\u201d It\u2019s a zeitgeist where youth isn\u2019t just tolerated but romanticized.<\/p>

One of the most romantic aspects of youth is its absence of expectations. Which is where the other angle of birthday blues, atelophobia<\/em>, or the fear of falling short of unrealistic standards, enters the picture.<\/p>

The novelist R.F. Kuang, who\u2019s perhaps one of the youngest success stories in her profession, wrote about the similarly precocious Olivia Rodrigo, lamenting the ego-death of no longer being the youngest prodigy in the room. Rodrigo\u2019s song \u201cTeenage Dream\u201d ruminates on the strange tension of growing out of the teenage angst she\u2019s made a career out of. If she \u201cgets better\u201d\u2014more stable, more mature\u2014in the emotions department, will she still be able to make good music? She\u2019s exceeded standards up until this point\u2014how will it feel when she gets a bit older and she\u2019s no longer hurtling over everyone\u2019s expectations? Kuang herself could relate: on the eve of her twentieth birthday, she cried over the death of her time as a teenager.<\/p>

Both cases might come across as melodrama, but maybe they\u2019re just following the societal script. The public gives grace to the young. Na\u00efve mistakes are anticipated, and displays of basic competency are cause for applause for the very young. Growing up requires losing that buffer of grace. Expectations mount exponentially with each passing year. And falling short of the cultural quota for where you should be professionally, creatively, or relationally can make young adults feel rejected or socially inadequate.<\/p>

This is where I was on my 27th birthday. I felt like I was falling behind. I didn\u2019t have my dream job. I wasn\u2019t changing the world. I wanted to pause aging because every step forward in time felt like a reminder of the ways I wasn\u2019t measuring up.<\/p>

This is an exhausting mindset, but it\u2019s a thoroughly Western one. We strive for the new, for continual forward momentum; we consume products so quickly that they lose their sheen within hours and beckon us to buy something newer. Rather than face the inevitabilities of our slowing forward momentum, we take Ponce de Le\u00f3n\u2019s route to hunt for the fountain of youth via an endless stream of lifestyle gurus, vitamin supplements, and bio-hacks.<\/p>

We all realize, at some level, that youth is fleeting, that fighting aging is like fighting gravity, and that accomplishing things at a younger age isn\u2019t inherently \u201cbetter\u201d than accomplishing something later on. But the stigma persists.<\/p>

This stigma, like our youth-obsessed media, has real consequences. It takes what would be an otherwise peaceful process of aging and exacerbates all its worst aspects. Yet in reality, aging isn\u2019t something to fear, dread, or just tolerate\u2014it\u2019s something to celebrate. <\/em><\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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When we put too many young people front and center\u2014or even just implicitly broadcast youthful beauty, charisma, or na\u00efvet\u00e9 as aspirational\u2014we distract from the radiance of aging.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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2.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The sidelining of society\u2019s older members is a newer phenomenon. Western society would undoubtedly benefit from a return to traditional cultural models of ascribing wisdom and virtue to the elderly. Many were seen as evidence that character growth was possible. Conversely, youthfulness was depicted as a jumble of immaturity, anxiety, and pressure\u2014something everyone should be thankful <\/em>to grow out of.<\/p>

In fact, there\u2019s an ancient Chinese saying: \u201cMay you find success at a young age.\u201d Which sounds wholesome until you realize it wasn\u2019t meant as a blessing but as a curse. <\/em>They\u2019d seen enough young upstarts sacrifice their character growth in pursuit of wealth and power to know that early success caved in on itself in the long run. The more success experienced at younger ages, the harder it becomes to reproduce that feeling of success later.<\/p>

Harvard Professor and author Arthur C. Brooks calls this phenomenon the \u201cstriver\u2019s curse.\u201d After studying the career apexes of scientists, writers, scholars, musicians, athletes, and artists, Brooks found that early success seemed to correspond with a higher level of dissatisfaction after successful careers leveled off. The character chiseled through an even distribution of respect in correlation to age seems to grant the virtue necessary to handle the weight of our accomplishments. But sadly, whatever semblance of respect for wisdom\u2014and drive for maturity\u2014our world once had seems to have altogether evaporated or moved to the fringes.<\/p>

Aging is something to celebrate, not dread or simply tolerate. In fact, dread is better spent toward perpetual adolescence. One can even discern the impact of youth obsession within contemporary religious communities. When we put too many young people front and center\u2014or even just implicitly broadcast youthful beauty, charisma, or na\u00efvet\u00e9 as aspirational\u2014we distract from the radiance of aging. It\u2019s not hard to find church planters advising strict age limits for who should be on stage. But the elderly are a necessary part of every congregation. They can be models of well-lived lives. Not always, of course; there are plenty of older folks who\u2019ve internalized all the worst parts of life and grown a shell of solipsistic bitterness. But for those who\u2019ve taken the highs and lows of life and allowed those punches to make them wiser, stronger, and happier\u2014those are the ones who are truly radiant.<\/p>

Churches can help people ease into the simple joys of aging by displaying the elderly in more flattering social positions. Dr. Gail Brenner argues that paying attention to the elderly can train us in five important ways: it encourages us to (1) be present in the moment, (2) appreciate what we have without being attached to it, (3) not waste our talents, (4) accept reality as it is, and (5) be more open to love and loving others. Theoretically, the young could teach these things, but seeing it displayed firsthand by the elderly themselves might simply carry more power. Multiple empirical studies<\/a> find that behavior spreads most effectively when we see that behavior modeled by others in our real-life social spheres. This is why intergenerational ministry is so vital. Of course, institutions require young people to ensure their future; but they also need the elderly or else the young won\u2019t know what to aspire to other than the passing trends of the day.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Life\u2019s second half is not an entropic spiral into uselessness, but an opportunity to make use of different parts of yourself that were, up to now, dormant.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In recent years, there\u2019s been a notable influx of the \u201cAging isn\u2019t so bad\u201d book genre. Among its titles are From Strength to Strength, Second Act, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, Second Mountain, <\/em>and so on. Their messages are all somewhat similar: the author assumes the transition into the back half of life is tumultuous and offers a hopeful way forward. While each book has its merits, New York Times<\/em> columnist David Brooks\u2019s Second Mountain <\/em>stands out. Realizing how first-half-of-life culture perpetuates a frustration with aging, Brooks rightly argues that we need to come to a point where we comfortably resign into the second.<\/p>

In Brooks\u2019s interpretation, those in the first half of life stock up on \u201cresume virtues\u201d\u2014achievements, degrees, zeros on paychecks, etcetera\u2014and neglect \u201ceulogy virtues\u201d\u2014the stuff people say about you at your funeral: the way you loved others, the kind of presence you emitted when walking into a room, what you sacrificed for God and others. It\u2019s natural for the young to strive toward resume virtues in blissful oblivion to eulogy virtues. This is because, as Jungian psychologist James Hollis suggests, the first half\u2019s agenda is social<\/em>\u2014\u201cmeeting the demands and expectations our milieu asks of us\u201d\u2014while the second half\u2019s agenda is spiritual<\/em>\u2014 \u201caddressing the larger issues of meaning.\u201d In other words, the first half is driven by acquisition <\/em>and the desire to accumulate. Those in the second half, however, will more often find themselves driven toward relinquishment: <\/em>a need to pare down material or emotional clutter to make space for what matters.<\/p>

Yet the refusal to let go of acquisition is one reason aging can feel painful. Against popular expectations, it turns out that the most likely demographic to start taking antidepressants aren\u2019t teenagers, but those in their 50s. When your body and neural makeup tell you to slow down, resisting it creates enough dissonance to cause mental and emotional distress. As Jung noted, \u201cWhat is a normal goal to a young person becomes a neurotic hindrance in old age.\u201d<\/p>

The lesson every generation is forced to learn is that resume virtues don\u2019t satisfy our existential cravings in the long run. Since our brains and bodies can\u2019t escape the reality of our imminent deaths forever, there comes a point in the human maturation process where meaning simply can\u2019t be predicated on temporal successes. It\u2019s precisely this refusal to stop prioritizing the resume that causes some to experience midlife as torturous.<\/p>

Aging is nowhere near as bad as it\u2019s characterized. In fact, it even opens up new parts of your brain<\/a>, allowing you to process information in novel ways. Life\u2019s second half is not an entropic spiral into uselessness, but an opportunity to make use of different parts of yourself that were, up to now, dormant. But if we don\u2019t learn to accept growing up, we will always experience aging as a curse rather than a blessing.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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There\u2019s no real need to disguise our age, to worry our best creative years are behind us, to fear our bodies and minds are in constant decay.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Coming to terms with the joys of aging might require a sober evaluation of youth. Not just the youth in our memories (which are always far too rose-tinted), but youth as it really is \u2014hormonal naivety and all.<\/p>

We tend to feel things most strongly when we\u2019re young\u2014like the first time you hold someone\u2019s hand or get your sixteen-year-old heart sliced to bits. Youth brims with the highest highs and lowest lows we ever experience, simply because all experiences are new and maximally novel. But being jerked in all directions by our hormones and emotions doesn\u2019t always feel great. That na\u00efve romanticism only seems covetable from the jaded adult who\u2019s edited all the bad parts out of their teenage memories.<\/p>

I think this might be why people get mentally stuck in their youth: they\u2019re our decades-long time capsule of all our most enormous dopamine spikes. So we hold on to them as if those were the \u201cgolden age\u201d when really, they just contained more erratic and hormonal thrills than we experience in our fifties.<\/p>

There might be less thrills and firsts, but aging is filled with more benefits than we realize. Our emotional intelligence sharpens. The accumulated wisdom from the trial and error of living grants us a sharper ability to discern how to manage our time and relationships better. Our brains naturally grow less impulsive and more self-controlled. We come to know ourselves well enough to say no and keep boundaries. We hurry less, love more.<\/p>

I can say from my sparse experience that even though some parts of growing up aren\u2019t enthralling (aging out of college ministry was quite the odd feeling), other parts are. I\u2019m not as anxious as I was when I was twenty. Recent memory does not recall any melodramatic fits of rage from getting stuck in traffic. When I disagree with someone, I don\u2019t feel the need to lash out. These aren\u2019t just<\/em> the natural results of aging. It\u2019s due to aging while keeping the reality of the spiritual needs of my soul in the forefront of my mind. It\u2019s due to the going-on-eight years of intentional spiritual formation practices every morning. It\u2019s part of growing in my understanding of being loved and learning to love and illuminate others. Of taming the need to refine resume virtues and intentionally keeping the eulogy virtues before the daily consciousness. So, in that sense, perhaps the point in all of this is that aging is most brutal for those who reject a spiritual framework\u2014as is more and more common in the modern West\u2014and most joyful for those who manage to frame each passing year in terms of the spiritual growth it permits.<\/p>

Putting a cap on eternal youth helps us accept reality for what it is. Like the author of Ecclesiastes says, \u201cFor everything there is a season, and a time\u2026a time to be born, and a time to die\u2026a time to weep and a time to laugh\u201d (3:1-4). There\u2019s no real need to disguise our age, to worry our best creative years are behind us, to fear our bodies and minds are in constant decay; rather, we can stand with the writer of Proverbs who said that \u201cThe glory of young men is their strength, but the splendor of old men is their gray hair\u201d (20:26). If we find ourselves with strength and ambition, let\u2019s use that to God\u2019s glory. If we find ourselves with gray hair and a desire to spend time with loved ones, let\u2019s also use that to God\u2019s glory.<\/p>

I\u2019m learning to like my birthdays. My resume virtues make me a little self-conscious from time to time, but I\u2019m beginning to understand that success and age don\u2019t have to correspond. If the research is true, then it might actually be better for me if my career success were to get delayed for a bit.<\/p>

There are certainly difficulties in aging that there\u2019s little use in ignoring. But like the psychologist Gina Barreca puts<\/a> it, \u201cGrowing older still seems better than the alternative.\u201d Despite our cultural messaging, there\u2019s more<\/em> beauty to be found in life\u2019s invitation from gray hairs than there is in prolonging adolescence.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Griffin Gooch<\/strong> is a writer, speaker, and professor based in Michigan who is currently working on his Ph.D. at Aberdeen University. Griffin is highly interested in the intersection of theology and other academic disciplines, and currently writes most frequently on Substack.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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In a world obsessed with youth and haunted by the passage of time, there’s a need to challenge the cultural dread of aging, to learn to celebrate its fruits of wisdom and liberation from the relentless chase of fleeting accomplishments. By Griffin 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