Aging Is a Constant Adaptation

What if it isn't one large surrender, but a succession of small deliberate changes in how we meet life?

Welcome to Age with Attitude, where I explore one question:

What sustains a life as we age?

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I am a sucker for nature documentaries. They beat a violent drama any day for me. I sleep much more easily afterwards. Beautiful locations, furry animals, seasonal changes. What’s not to love?

However, lately, the documentaries I have been watching have disturbing backstories.

Take Saving Yellowstone with Dennis Quaid.

Yellowstone appears timeless. Yet it is under continual pressure. Its survival depends upon interconnected forms of adaptation, while scientists watch small signals for clues about what is changing and the impact of those changes.

As Quaid says, “Yellowstone must adapt to 21st-century challenges. And the more information we have from scientists, the better prepared we will be to face the future.”

As I watched, it occurred to me that aging may ask something similar of us. Not one large surrender, but a succession of adaptations.

Aging well is not about maintaining an unchanged life. It is repeatedly noticing what has changed and finding a new way to meet life.

Can nature teach us how to adapt to our own changing life cycles?

Animals don’t think about adaptation. They simply respond to changing conditions to survive. We humans have the capacity to think about aging and ask ourselves how we can—or want to—adapt.

What if adaptation is not surrendering to decline, but refusing to let an old way of doing something become the only way life can still be expressed?

I think about what would happen if the capabilities within my partnership with Frank were no longer there, for whatever reason. Would either of us remain in our large beachside home, 100 kilometres from our closest family along an increasingly congested freeway? Where would we live? What sort of accommodation would be appropriate?

We are currently house-sitting for my granddaughter and her partner while they are overseas. They live in the city neighbourhood where we once had a city pad. We sold it when we retired from corporate life 15 years ago, so this stay presented a perfect opportunity to experience city life as residents again, even if only temporarily.

We took a bus today. It was easier than driving, then finding and paying for parking. I am not sure how long it has been since we last rode a bus.

We coped with the technology, unfamiliar routes and new bus stations in a city bustling with activity as it prepares to host the 2032 Olympics. We walked a lot, revisited old memories and noticed how much had changed.

Being somewhere else is also a little inconvenient. You don’t realise how much you rely on all the “stuff” at home to support your daily rituals: yoga mat, blocks, bolsters, Peloton bike, large computer screens, televisions tuned to our viewing habits, favorite pots and pans. I could go on.

It might have been easier to stay home and continue with the steady routine of our lives. But I had begun to wonder whether that is letting inertia quietly take hold.

It is not as though we don’t know how to adapt. We spent more than 20 years travelling internationally for months at a time. But with every passing year, we become more settled in our home by the beach, with family coming to us.

I wanted to test our ability to tolerate some discomfort. I wanted to pretend that we lived here for now; to gather casually for a family breakfast on a Sunday, catch up with school friends of more than 50 years, or revisit our old haunts.

It is part of thinking about the different options that might be available to us as we age. Mind you, the luxurious retirement village at the end of the street has enormous appeal. Probably a price tag to match.

I like the thought that the more information we gather, the better prepared we will be to meet what is coming.

A friend recently told me about an 80-something woman she had met in her rural Australian town. The woman had cycled alone through Croatia and Morocco.

“Yes, there are discomforts,” she said, “but I take them in my stride.” That was food for thought.

I have already chosen an approach to aging based on fitness and capability. It comes with discomforts, although most of them now sit firmly within my normal life.

Discomfort these days lies more in saying no to choices that no longer align with it. How I would love to indulge in a spur-of-the-moment, “Yeah, let’s get dinner and a few drinks,” rather than a carefully planned, once-in-a-while indulgence, preferably breakfast or lunch with the menu checked beforehand.

Adaptation often begins with discomfort. Given time, what once felt awkward or restrictive can become a new normal.

On the other hand, when we repeatedly refuse to adapt, life can begin to narrow around us—sometimes so gradually that we barely notice.

We adapt one way or another.

We adapt deliberately, finding new forms for what matters. Or we adapt by gradually expecting less of life and less of ourselves.

I have written before that decline is real, but it should not become the whole story.

Adaptation is the mechanism that explains how we live inside that truth.

Over the next few weeks, I want to explore what adaptation asks of us as we age: the truths we must be willing to see, the capabilities we may need to develop, the choices that protect our self-respect, and new ways that what matters to us might continue to find expression.

Because adaptation is easier when it is not yet urgent.

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I’d love to hear how this lands for you.

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