Playing Into Successful Aging

In preparation for a group called Healing Into Aging that I will be leading at Southport Congregational Church this fall, I have been reading a book called Aging Well, by George E. Vaillant, MD.

This is work. Dr. Vaillant is a researcher, scientist and I am neither. I wouldn’t recognize a longitudinal study—something he built the book around—if I fell over it. There are times when I want to shout, “Oh shut up about the structure of this study and get on with the results!”

Nonetheless, perseverance has revealed that the book contains useful information about aging and some of it, I think, is quite helpful and brilliant. So I forgive him for leading me through what has felt, this summer, like a narrow trail of bramble bushes. Near the end of the book at last, I have achieved light-filled, open pastures.

What is attracting me right now are his words about successful aging and the “fun factor.” He talks about the post retirement significance of play and creativity, but his theories about play interests me most because I think I don’t do enough of it.

Making the distinction between play and creativity, Vaillant tells us that, “creativity puts into the world what was not there before,” whereas play “has no product.” Play is “less approval seeking, freer from convention and creates less performance anxiety. It produces joy and does not require a reward.”

Presumably writing this blog and a few other things that I do are creative, and that’s a positive for healthy aging, but he’s right. Do I check the reader stats when I post a new blog? You bet I do. Am I concerned when a blog I’ve written fails to strike a chord with readers? Yes. Would I love the writing as much if no one read it? Actually I have written 150 pages of a memoir which no one will ever read and enjoyed doing it—but posting a blog that no one ever reads? I don’t think that would make me happy at all.

Back to play. Vaillant is talking about games: bocce, bridge—if it’s not razorblade competitive—croquet, poker, tennis, golf, scrabble. And he’s not writing about forging new neuropathways with these games, although that can happen, he is talking about playing, like a child, for the sheer fun of it and making new friends along the way.

Young grandchildren are great for this. Candy Land, anyone? Go Fish? Games galore just for the fun of it.

Reading this section of the book about the importance of play helped me to understand even more fully why I am loving this beginner bridge group that I am in: the one that doesn’t keep score: the one that applauds spontaneously when anyone plays a hand really well, making a difficult contract. We are playing in the bridge sandbox together and when someone builds a competent castle we cheer.

Vaillant writes that playing in this way involves “learning how to maintain self respect while letting go of self importance.” Not taking ourselves too seriously is good for our health, he maintains, and is an essential part of successful aging.

We can ruin play by taking ourselves, and our performance too seriously. Whatever game we are playing can cease to be playful and become just another way to one-up someone, seek approval and give ourselves performance ratings.  To our detriment, we humans are adept at twisting our self-esteem around almost anything we engage in. We can take the play out of play really fast.

There’s no question about it. I need to take my life less seriously, play with it and in it more than I do, and in spite of the labor of getting through his book, I thank Dr. Vaillant for his helpful observations.

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Meanwhile, you are most welcome to join our discussion group on Healing Into Aging at Southport Congregational Church. Please call the church at: 203 255 1594.

Six Sessions of Mindfulness Meditation and Conversation

Dates: Wednesdays: Sept 9, 16, 23, (omitting Sept 30) and Oct. 7, 14, and 21.

Time: 4:15-5:30 in the Library. Do come!