I have been introspecting for a while now about the process of aging of the mind and the transformation that is happening in me who is 78 and possibly in many of us in the same age group.
In our younger days we have been keen observers and learners of minutiae in every subject we were interested in. For instance in our school and college days we learned subjects in Science and Technology ( those who specialised in Science and Engineering subjects, for example) intensely concentrating on every detail.
After education once we entered our professional careers these details faded away from our minds leaving behind an overall idea of the concepts basing on which we acquired professional skills that were required to execute tasks at our workplaces. Very many things that we learned in detail depending on the demand on hand at the workplace also gradually faded away with their essence staying on in the mind.
This seems to be a continuous process as we encounter new situations until age catches up with us. It is understandable since there are only a finite number of neurons in our brain and they can't be ecpected to hold infinite amount of information and they need to either discard or at least codify part of their contents in order to take in new information.
Once age catches up we don't go into the details of even the current task on hand. We gradually tend to evade tasks that need close scrutiny and intense involvement. In an organisation you leave such tasks to the younger members of the team and you do the overall supervision and control. Perhaps it is in recognition of this process of evolution of aging mind that in an organisation's hierarchy the top posts are reserved for 'senior' folks. In a family the elderly people are gradually sidetracked and relegated to responsibilities that do not need intense involvement, constant attention and acute alertness. The so-called spiritual/philosophical disposition that one develops towards the later years is in line with this natural transformation of mind as it ages.
This process of evolution is absolutely natural and perhaps conforms to the progressive physiological process of lowering of neural population in the brain. In the course of such evolution mind tends to gradually retract from it's basic faculties that empower it to delve deep into details which are pronounced in early years and to reshape itself by acquiring a tendency to generalise and engage itself in generalities on all its involvements. It is thus a journey from details to generalities as one ages.
The distant gaze into the empty space that very aged people generally are seen to indulge in is perhaps a symptom of this tendency of the mind to run away from the details of the foreground scene.
The ability to come to generalisation after filtering through the details of an issue is considered to be a faculty indicative of high degree of intelligence. So in a certain sense the compulsion of aging that leads to a tendency of generalisation is up to a point a positive faculty. It becomes a sign of degradation of power of comprehension only when you start losing the faculty of detailed study. Alzheimer's in a sense is not too deviant a phenomenon when one realises that aging causes gradual withdrawal of the mind from its basic ability to delve into details. It is a well-known fact of brain physiology that neurons die away when they are NOT being used and conversely if there is NEED for them, fresh neurons take birth to meet the requirement. So the aging gets accelerated when we are satisfied with generalities alone to the extent of shunning the details altogether.
To reverse aging of brain, therefore, we need to deliberately engage the mind in the study of details in one or the other of our interests. Such a practice may help us to keep the Alzheimer's at bay. Hence it may be very useful for all of us to learn something new deliberately and to remain mentally active, even if it is not going to be of any mundane use to us, just to keep mentally healthy as we age.
I am therefore consciously doing that and I would urge, if you are convinced of my rationale presented above, all of you my FB friends in my age group to do the same. I'm trying to learn new things. I could also perhaps continue to teach. Hope to be able to fight the debilitating aspects of aging to some extent.
The flooding of our lives by the modern technological gadgets like the Smart Phone is indeed a boon and we must attempt to use them intelligently and exploit it's myriad features which will not only stimulate our aging brain but also serve us as a powerful medium of interaction with today's youth through the ubiquitous social tools such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, Instagram and the like.
Another issue I'm conscious of, that is attributable to aging , is about the difficulty, (which is widely expressed ) to recall fast enough the names of familiar people, places, sometimes vocabulary etc. The reason is apparently the same, namely, shrinking of the neuron population. Again partial remedy can be found by deliberately commiting them to memory after we recall them and inventing more and more occasions to use them.
Yet another observation that has struck me is that as we age, at the emotional level, we tend to nurture the so-called higher or 'satwik' emotions such as kindness, empathy, understanding, pardoning attitude, helping attitude, charity and so on. As Bhagavat Geeta asserts that all of Nature is the outcome of the play of 3 'Gunas' ( Tamas, Rajas and Satwa) and it is impossible to completely get rid of them by our volition, except that a true Yogi's effort should be to outgrow them. However, every individual has the liberty to decide what to cultivate more in the process of his evolution. My experience is, which I believe may be the experience of a majority, that the brain automatically tries to cultivate 'satwa' as it ages.
( Let me make it clear at this juncture that I'm not a religious person in the conventional sense except that I firmly believe in the existence of a Universal Intelligence that oversees this mysterious phenomenon we know as 'life' and this infinite cosmos of matter and energy all of which obey precise laws and tread this mysterious track of Time which has no beginning or end!!! Science has been able only to scratch on the sensorily perceptible miniscule part of this unfathomable incomprehensible entity! I also believe in the possibility of that Intelligence being generally benign to its creations, as are we to our creations, or in other words I believe it to be essentially 'satwik'. )
While the brain tends to withdraw from details and meticulous analyses, which are functions of the left half of the brain, our attitude seems to draw from the faculties attributed to the right half such as the emotions mentioned above. Is it that the linkage mechanism connecting the two halves becomes more effective as we age?
