Reset

Does there come a day in every man's life when he finds a transition from the upslope straight line to a peak and then decline? I can't be alone in this, can I?

The pattern is universal, according to the social scientist Arthur Brooks who wrote From Strength to Strength. After the age of fifty, you might find your reaching peak performance. Your decisions might not be as crisp as they once were. Your instincts are less reliable. Your productivity isn't as high.

Maybe you can relate to the decline mentioned by Arthur Brooks. I can (yes, it hurts). And I realised that I have also experienced a diminishing skill to recall names. Is it true that, by the time we're fifty, our brain is as crowded with information as the New York Public Library? The answer is: Yes. Mind you, your personal research librarian is also getting creaky, slow, and easily distracted. This is part of the story of growing old, and I wish it was not, but it is.

I won't kick myself for forgetting the name of any acquaintance, or even the name of my patient for that matter. Years ago, I could precisely name each and every patient of mine. I can't now. I know I shouldn't regret. This is what Arthur Brooks has taught me. As we age, we should not cry for the decline in our fluid intelligence (such as the ability to reason, think flexibly, and solve novel problems); we are simply entering a life reset to gain our crystallized intelligence (referring to the ability to use a stock of knowledge learned in the past).

To go back to the metaphor of a vast library, we won't have to regret how slow the librarian is. This does not matter. What matters is that we marvel at the size of the book collection our librarian is wandering around in.