Age Reset

Adjusting Our World to Reflect New Realities of Later Life Stages

Image from the Reframing Aging Campaign in San Francisco 2019

In the past three weeks, I received heartbreaking news from Austria, my country of origin: two close friends from my youth passed away. A month ago, a dear friend in the Bay Area got married, and another friend, five years my senior, recently started law school at 72.

These events seem to defy traditional life stage frameworks or what psychoanalyst Erik Erikson once defined as the Eight Stages of Psychosocial Development (ideally, ranging from ‘Trust’ to ‘Integrity’), which have long served as a foundation for understanding human growth. 

Later, his wife, Joan Erikson, added a ninth stage—advanced old age—characterized by a shift from material concerns to a more spiritual perspective, increased reflection on life experiences, and acceptance of mortality.

While these stages of identity may still represent the norm, it seems many of us experience a jumble of life stages in our later years, as we navigate everything from grabbling with mortality to forming new intimate relationships and enjoying fresh surges of productivity.

Shifting perceptions

This new reality reaffirms my belief in the need for an "age reset”. We must rethink the services available to people in later life, the quality of medical care they receive, and how society views the value of older adults. 

Recently, The American Society on Aging declared October 9th Ageism Awareness Day. While this initiative is essential, it doesn’t fully capture my feelings. I want age to be one of many factors in how I’m treated, not the only or main criteria. 

Beyond raising awareness 

I propose our goal should be to enhance healthspan—to empower everyone to live a healthy life for as long as possible. What if we aimed to make America the best country in the world for healthy living? This could include things like

1. Free access to higher education in older age.

2. Doctors making home visits to homebound patients (like they do at the Berkeley Free Clinic).

3. Safe, well-maintained sidewalks and parks that enable people of all abilities to enjoy public life.

4. Tax breaks for small businesses to acknowledge their vital role in social connections.

5. Easy to access government services that support healthy living at home.

6. Reimagining the arts and artists as essential contributors to enrichment of everyday life.

Perhaps we could start with a simple goal: ensuring that everyone in America has the right to equally and joyfully walk the streets in their cities and neighborhoods. Taking a page from Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani’s book, The Cities We Need: Essential Stories of Everyday Places, city governments could prioritize action items #3 and #4 from the list above. At the very least, this would help foster connection, conversation, and trust—essential components for healthy living at any age.