Aging bodies: adolescence, take 2

One of my favorite courses over the 30 years I taught was the Psychology of Adolescence. That may seem odd to some folks. Not a lot of people seem too enchanted with adolescents. Heck, maybe I just identified with their painful angst, disguised as bravado. But really, even though huge groups of adolescents can seem annoying, one-on-one, most of them are really interesting human beings. And besides, most of their seeming craziness is really understandable if you put it in a developmental context.

Still, over the years, I have never, ever wished I could return to those wondrous days of high school. The uncertainty, the painful self-consciousness, the fear of being judged (and misjudged), the obsession with what your peers think, feel, say, do, even are. The certainty that you are unique and misunderstood. And that vague sense that you’re supposed to become something, do something that’s you – the “real” you – instead of whatever it is that “they” want you to be.

So, imagine my surprise when, during a conversation with my partner, I realized that I am back in adolescence. At least in some ways. The particular context was a conversation about matters of the body. We both recall how, in our youth we thought that “old” people had a bothersome habit of talking all the time about their bodies—their ailments, their pains, their injuries, their everyday bodily functions. The tone varied—sometimes folks  bemoaned these things, other times they bragged about them. But whichever tone, the body entered into way too many conversations for our young taste.

But that was then. Now, we find ourselves talking more and more about our physical status. The past few weeks, she’s been nursing an injured shoulder, and this weekend, I’m having serious dental pain. So our first topic of conversation in the morning—right after “how did you sleep?” which is itself a body-ish question—is to check in on each other’s current malady. When she pointed out how often these topics are now a part of our conversation (we were driving along at the time, discussing guess what), I was taken directly back to my psych of adolescence course.

Of course adolescents are preoccupied with their bodies, I’d say. All that obsession with hairstyles and clothing styles, with hyper-thinness in girls and muscularity in guys, with pimples and body odor, with anything that looks vaguely out of the norm—all of it makes sense. Think about how drastically adolescents’ bodies are changing, I’d say. Everything is suddenly different—height, body proportions, fat distribution, muscle mass, hair and skin texture, voice, facial hair, budding breasts, periods... How could they not want to wrest control of some part of their physical being? They’re simply saying, “I can’t help it that I’m not as tall as the other guys, but I can dress cooler than anyone else!” or “I can’t help it that I have zits (although I’ll try anything!), but at least I’m skinny and have the requisite long, straight, blond hair.”

And here’s where old age and adolescence meet. Like adolescents, we’re in a period of life where everything about our bodies is changing. And, like adolescents, we don’t have much control over a lot of it. Same litany: height, body proportions, fat distribution, muscle mass, skin and hair texture (not to mention color and absence), voice, secondary sex characteristics. On top of all that, add health issues that are new to old age. Of course we focus more on matters of the body.

Our experience is different, fortunately, in that for many of us, at least these changes don’t come with the same tortured self-consciousness that they evoked in adolescence. Most of us are somewhat over that obsession with others’ expectations … although probably none of us is ever completely free of it. Now, we don’t have to have the latest style or the “in” hairdo to feel like it’s safe to leave the house. Still, our bodies do hold a more central place in our thoughts—and I suspect that our preoccupation probably has the same roots as it had in adolescence. When things are so totally in flux, as they are now, of course we are preoccupied with the process. Eventually, common wisdom has it, old people slip into a “second childhood.” Perhaps. But the stage of that trajectory that my peers and I seem to be in looks more like adolescence to me: bodies rule.

Ah well, the first of Cherie Carter-Scott’s “rules of being human” (popularized by Jack Campbell in Chicken Soup of the Soul) is this: “You will receive a body. Whether you love it or hate it, it's yours for life, so accept it. What counts is what's inside.”

The last rule in that list promises, “You will forget all of this.” I guess that’s why we don’t instantly get the link between ourselves and those obnoxious teenagers in the mall.