Old Age

The next time you find yourself rotting in bed or going through the motions of another boring day, think about your older self. This is what TikTok creator @sonyatrachsel does when she’s in a funk. She’ll have what she calls a “time traveling day,” and it’s an outlook that’s resonating on the app.

On a time traveling day, Sonya will pretend that her 80-year-old self gets to come back to this exact moment and relive it. “You have to get real with it,” she said. “Close your eyes, imagine yourself sitting in your mansion on a chair, and then poof — you’re here today.”

There are so many reasons why Sonya’s “time traveling” trend has struck a chord. For one, it might make you emotional to think about your older self getting the chance to come back to a younger body for a day, kind of like a second chance.

This is a really beautiful way to frame your thoughts, practice gratitude, and think about what you would do if you had youth on your side again. Would you ride a bike? Go for a walk? Learn something new? Would you linger longer in the park and stare at the flowers? Be more adventurous?

Even mundane moments, like waiting in line, can become more meaningful when you think about how excited your 80-year-old self would be to come back to do it all over again. “It just becomes part of the experience,” she said.

This sweet and thoughtful approach to living can help you notice and appreciate the little things around you, but it can also inspire you to do more, live more, and have more fun. So, get up, get out there, and give your 80-year-old self a story to tell.

In her comments, someone wrote, “You just changed my life.” Another said, “This is genius! Don’t take your youth for granted.” “Thank you,” one commenter wrote under the video. “When I read this, I got up out of bed so fast.”

The New York Time’s ethicist received the following from an anonymous reader:

I have an 85-year-old neighbor who is a sweet friend and caring person. My issue is that she is very religious and I’m not at all. She prays for me and says it in person, texts, and emails for even the most minor of situations. I’ve told her my view of religion and that she doesn’t need to pray for me. She said she has to, otherwise she’s not following the Bible. I’m trying to ignore this but it’s really bothering me that she can’t respect my wishes.

“The Ethicist” responded:

I’m glad that you’ve been honest with each other about your very different views concerning prayer. But… if you don’t think these prayers will do you any good, you presumably also don’t think they’ll do you any harm. By contrast, she thinks that you’ll be worse off without them, and that praying for you is her duty.

The only reason you give for objecting to her prayers is that she has failed to comply with your wishes. Yet I don’t find that she has thereby treated you with disrespect… So, you’re not entitled to insist that she stop including you in her prayers. What you can fairly ask is simply that she refrain from informing you about them. Still, instead of requiring that your octogenarian neighbor change her ways, I wonder whether you might change yours — and learn to accept this woman for who she is, hearing her prayers as a sincere expression of her loving feelings toward you.

Harvard geneticist David Sinclair’s business pitch has remained largely the same: Aging can be slowed or reversed, and we are about to figure out how.

“A lot of my colleagues dislike that phrase, the reversibility of aging,” he told a roomful of longevity investors. “But I truly believe that, based on my lab’s research and now others, that aging can be reversed. If I can make one medicine that would change people’s lives, I’d be very happy.” Sinclair also has co-founded companies that sell directly to consumers products such as supplements and tests that purport to show one’s “biological age.” He has also helped raise more than $1 billion.

But according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the investors have almost nothing to show for it. Four companies trying to develop longevity drugs have gone bankrupt or largely halted operations. Another four either haven’t yet tested their drugs or gene therapies in humans or have run only small-scale trials that make it difficult to know whether a drug will work.

Sinclair has drawn criticism from fellow scientists, who say he exaggerates the findings and implications of age-related research. The board of the Academy for Health and Lifespan Research, a group Sinclair co-founded and led, asked him to resign as president earlier this year after he was quoted as saying a dog chew sold by a company he co-founded reversed aging in dogs.

Possible Preaching Angles:

It looks like we’re still living in the reality of the Fall, that human beings will age, grow old, and eventually die. We are still mortal!

Max Evans-Browning, a five-year-old from Wales, captured hearts worldwide by creating a touching tribute to Sir David Attenborough’s 99th birthday. Max spent four days drawing 99 animals — one for each year of the renowned naturalist’s life — demonstrating his admiration and artistic dedication.

Max’s project spanned eight A3 sheets, and his parents proudly shared, “He’s a huge fan of Sir David and wanted to do something special to celebrate his birthday.” The child’s detailed and colorful drawings include a wide variety of animals, from familiar pets to exotic wildlife, showcasing his keen interest in nature at a young age.

Attenborough himself has been a source of inspiration for many generations, and Max’s artistic gift is a heartfelt homage to the man whose documentaries have shaped public understanding of the natural world. Max’s mother said, “It’s amazing to see such creativity and enthusiasm in a child so young.”

The tribute also highlights the power of youthful curiosity and creativity in fostering a connection with nature and science. Max’s drawings not only celebrate a milestone birthday but also encourage others to appreciate the diversity of life on Earth.

Local media praised Max’s efforts as “a wonderful example of how children can be inspired by science and nature.” The story has resonated globally, reminding people of all ages to cherish the natural world and those who dedicate their lives to protecting it.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Like Max’s art honors Attenborough and creation, our worship honors God through our gifts and love for what He made.

The number of Americans living to at least 100 is expected to quadruple over the next 30 years, to about 422,000 by the mid-2050’s, according to the Pew Research Center. Laura Carstensen, founding director of Stanford University’s Center on Longevity, says research has made surprising discoveries about the way older people view their lives. With fewer “what-ifs,” they appear to gain more clarity on their place in the world. She added “…changes will be needed to make the most of those added years.”

Most people believe that growing older is associated with loneliness, depression, anxiety, and that mental health suffers. The very good news is, it looks like people do better emotionally as they get older. This has been so surprising to researchers and to the general public that it’s probably been the most scrutinized finding about aging.

A lot goes wrong as we get older. There are physical problems, loss of loved ones, and age discrimination. There’s a lot that isn’t good about growing older, but people seem to do better emotionally. Older people have shorter time horizons. For many years, people thought that must make people miserable and scared. The interesting thing is there’s a paradox. It actually makes people feel calmer not to have to prepare for this long and nebulous future, and to be able to live more in the present.

Younger people are almost always thinking about the future. They almost always have one foot out the door, whatever they’re doing. And older people seem to do better just being able to be in the present and enjoy the moment. I think that is because they don’t have to keep planning. As people get older it’s clearer where they stand in the world and what they’re good at. And older people tend to look at the positive in life.

It doesn’t appear to be good for individuals or societies to have a large group of people kind of sit it out for 30 years. What we need to do is rethink how we live our lives from the beginning all the way through, in order to optimize these longer lives.

Possible Preaching Angle:

If you retire at age 65 or even 70 but live to be 100, what are you going to do for the Lord in those last 30 plus years? Are you really going to just sit in church for all those years? What does the Lord want you to do?

Need some perspective on the brevity of life? Here's a God's-eye view of the earth: Check out this real-time map of births and deaths around the world.

In 1950, there were 2.5 billion humans. As of January 2025, there are nearly 8.1 billion people. In another 30 years, according to U.S. Census Bureau projections, there will be more than 9 billion.

Brad Lyon has a doctoral degree in mathematics and does software development. He wanted to make those numbers visual. So, he and designer Bill Snebold made a hugely popular interactive simulation map of births and deaths in the U.S. alone (as of 2024, population 337 million)—the population of which is on pace to increase 44 percent by 2050.

Possible Preaching Angles:

Birth; Death; Life, short - How many people will die in the next minute? How many will be born? How should these numbers motivate us? Think of each of them as a story, as a unique soul loved infinitely by God. This is an excellent starting point for a sermon on Easter, resurrection, and our mortality. Consider projecting the real-time map as a stunning visual illustration.

In the year 1909, seven-year-old Walt Disney was playing by himself in the backyard of his family's farmhouse. He decided to sneak up on a big brown owl, but when he grabbed it the owl panicked, Disney threw it to the ground and stomped it to the death. According to his biographers, that owl haunted him for years, and produced a morbid fear of death.

Disney’s first big hit as a young animator came when he was 26 years old, in a cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse. But he immediately followed up that success with a short feature titled “The Skeleton Dance,” which opens with a terrified owl perched in a tree followed by skeletons rising from their graves. Disney’s distributor complained, saying, “We don’t want this gruesome crap… More mice… More mice!”

This was a small sample of what was to come. One scholar said, “If Disney was a mouthpiece for an American way of life, the force of his voice depended on a curious obsession with death.” Virtually every one of his famous films focused on the subject, from Snow White to Pinocchio.

His personal life was focused on decline and demise as well. Disney’s daughter Diane said that Disney hired a fortuneteller when he was in his early 30s to predict when he would die. The fortuneteller predicted the age of 35. Disney distracted himself by workaholism and success. If he stayed busy, maybe he could distract both himself and the Reaper. He survived 35, but never forgot the prediction. Shortly before his 55th birthday, he knew that maybe he had misheard, and the fortuneteller had said 55, not 35.

The longevity business is booming. People are flocking to longevity meetings and taking compounds they hope will extend their lives. Investors are backing scientists researching techniques to reprogram cells to a younger state. Longevity influencers argue that if they can live long enough, scientific breakthroughs will keep them going indefinitely. “We are going to start to understand how to rejuvenate and revitalize ourselves. This is what science does,” said Dr. Peter Diamandis, a 63-year-old entrepreneur who runs longevity trips for investors.

But S. Jay Olshansky, who studies the upper bounds of human longevity at the University of Illinois Chicago, believes people shouldn’t expect to live to 100. He contends most will reach between 65-90. Olshansky said, “It’s basic biology. As people grow older, their cells and tissues accumulate damage. Breakdowns of one kind or another happen more frequently and get increasingly difficult to repair.”

Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan explained the many reasons in his book, Why We Die. He doesn’t believe current interventions will dramatically extend lifespan. Techniques to reverse aging would have to help every system in the body, including the brain, over a long period.

Trinity Evangelical Divinty School professor Kevin Vanhoozer writes about caring for his aging mother in an issue of CT magazine:

For nine years now, I have been watching my mother’s identity slowly fade as memories and capacities switch off, one after another, like lights of a house shutting down for the night. Marriage may be a school of sanctification, as Luther said, but caring for aging parents is its grad school, especially when he or she lives with you and suffers from dementia.

It’s been said that as we become older, we become caricatures of ourselves. Dementia speeds the process. It’s easy to see why: With loss of executive cognitive functioning, we’re less prone to monitor what we say and do. We begin to fly on auto-pilot, re-tracing again and again well-trod paths.

What lies under … the social masks we have carefully constructed? What lies under my mother’s happy face? (“I’m fine,” she’d say, even after a fall). I recently discovered the answer.

Years into the dementia, she lost her last line of defense and began to voice her inmost thoughts aloud. “Father, don’t let me fall” accompanied her every shuffling step behind her walker. Initially I thought this terribly sad—clearly, she wasn’t fine but anxious—yet I eventually found it comforting. The Bible depicts life as a walk: Shouldn’t we all be praying to the Lord to help us avoid missteps? Though she had forgotten former friends and neighbors, and large swaths of her own life, she remembered the fatherhood of God.

Humans have been trying to chase away gray hair for millennia. Clay tablets from the Assyrian Empire dated to the 7th Century B.C. mention using the gall of a black ox, cypress oil, licorice, and honey to turn gray hair black.

Ancient Egyptians applied oil cooked with the blood of a black calf, according to the 3,500-year-old Ebers Papyrus. (Presumably, if it worked, we’d still be trying it).

Tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, who is spending millions experimenting on himself to slow aging, posted a YouTube video detailing his regimen to reverse hair loss and graying; the video has over 1.5 million views.

Johnson, 46, uses two topical treatments. One contains an herbal extract that, Johnson acknowledges, has colored his hair. But he says something is reversing his grays. When he has looked closely at plucked hairs, he says color has returned to some of them.

What is working? He isn’t sure. Johnson’s routine also includes more than 50 supplements daily and trips to a Honduran island for $25,000 gene-therapy injections.

In an interview with Danny Devito, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger despairs at the reality of death and wonders who’s to blame. When someone asked him what happens when we die, he said (curse words deleted):

Nothing. You’re 6 feet under. Anyone that tells you something else is a [...] liar. We don’t know what happens with the soul and all this spiritual stuff that I’m not an expert in, but I know that the body as we see each other now, we will never see each other again like that … When people talk about, 'I will see them again in heaven,' it sounds so good, but the reality is that we won’t see each other again after we’re gone. That’s the sad part. I know people feel comfortable with death, but I don’t. Because I will [...] miss [...] everything.

Schwarzenegger considers what that he’ll miss when he dies: “to have fun and to go to the gym and to pump up, to ride my bike on the beach, to travel around, to see interesting things all over the world.”

DEVITO: “Life! It’s the best!”

Schwarzenegger then wonders who’s to blame.

SCHWARZENEGGER: I tell you, there’s someone that mixed up this whole thing. Think about it. Who can we blame?

DEVITO: You mean that we don’t live forever?

SCHWARZENEGGER: Yeah. That we have to die.

DEVITO: That’s tough, man.

SCHWARZENEGGER: I don’t know what the deal is, but in any case, it’s a reality, and it truly [ticks] me off.

DEVITO: You don’t want to die.

SCHWARZENEGGER: No. What the […]? What kind of deal is that?

One-third of U.S. adults said they would probably or definitely take a drug to prevent or reverse graying if such a medication were approved, according to a poll of 9,000 people. Some endorse gobbling black sesame seeds and blackstrap molasses to give gray hair the brush off. Others take liquid chlorophyll or douse their hair in onion juice. In online forums, posts about reversing grays can draw hundreds of replies.

Humans have been trying to chase away gray for millennia. Clay tablets from the Assyrian Empire dated to the 7th Century B.C. mention using the gall of a black ox, cypress oil, licorice, and honey to turn gray hair black. Ancient Egyptians applied oil cooked with the blood of a black calf, according to the 3,500-year-old Ebers Papyrus. (Presumably, if it worked, we’d still be trying it).

Tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, who is spending millions experimenting on himself to slow aging, posted a YouTube video detailing his regimen to reverse hair loss and graying; the video has nearly 700,000 views.

Johnson, 46, uses two topical treatments. One contains an herbal extract that, Johnson acknowledges, has colored his hair. But he says something is reversing his grays. When he has looked closely at plucked hairs, he says color has returned to some of them. What is working? He isn’t sure. Johnson’s routine also includes more than 50 supplements daily and trips to a Honduran island for $25,000 gene-therapy injections.

An article in The New York Times explored the following scenario. Perhaps this routine sounds familiar: You wake up, look in the mirror and scrutinize the dark, hollowed-out skin underneath your eyes. You look exhausted, despite having slept well. And maybe you look older than you are, too.

According to the article, “Dark circles are one of the most common skin complaints … Some skin care products can offer some benefits, but they may not live up to their brightening claims.” The article concluded that most solutions for dark circles under our eyes aren’t really solutions.

Eye creams and serums that claim to improve dark circles can be expensive. And most haven’t undergone any real intensive lab or clinical testing, so they’re often ineffective. Because dark circles can have various causes—there is not always a one-size-fits-all solution for getting rid of them.

But the best part of the article is tucked away in the reader comments section. Two women offered perhaps the best solution on the market—acceptance. Here’s what Clare from DC wrote: “I'm 92. Nobody looks at me anyway. Just be glad you can open those eyes every morning.” Then TheraP from the Midwest wrote: “Maybe we need to just accept the aging process with a certain humility and a bit of good humor.”

The first thing to know about people who shun retirement to work past age 80 is that they are probably busier, and possibly cooler, than you.

One said an interview would have to wait because he was traveling to France for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Another said he would be free after hitting a research deadline and organizing his Harvard Business School class’s 65th reunion. A third, available on shorter notice, emailed a physical description before meeting: “In the spirit of YOLO, I have blue hair and tattoos.”

Growing numbers of 80-somethings are deciding that if days are finite, they are better spent on the job than in retirement. Harrison Ford, 80, released his latest Indiana Jones movie, Jane Goodall, 89, is still protecting chimps, Smokey Robinson, 83, is still touring.

Roughly 650,000 Americans over 80 were working last year, that’s about 18% more than a decade earlier. Some people have been pressed back into duty by inflation and stock-market volatility. Many cite a simpler reason to keep working—they just want to. These workers joke about getting bored on the golf course or being pushed out of the house by a spouse who won’t tolerate idleness. Beneath the wisecracks is a sense of purpose that refuses to fade. They just can’t quit their careers.

Possible Preaching Angles:

As a positive illustration this shows that retirement can still be a fruitful time of life. As a negative illustration this could show how people’s identities and worth are still wrapped up in work.

According to a new poll, more Americans over the age of 50 are using cannabis now than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Among a sample of over 2,000 older adults (ages 50-80), 12% said they had consumed a product containing THC within the past year and 4% reported doing so multiple times per week.

Study leader and addiction psychologist Anne Fernandez, Ph.D. said,

As the stress of the pandemic and the increased legalization of cannabis converged, our findings suggest cannabis use increased among older adults nationally. Older adults represent a vulnerable age group for cannabis use due to interactions with medications, risky driving, cannabis-related mental health impacts, and increased possibility of falls and memory issues.

The 12% using cannabis in 2023 is notably higher than the 9.5% in 2019, and much higher than the 3% reported in a 2006 study. Back then, only 12 U.S. states had legalized medical cannabis laws. The National Poll on Healthy Aging reported in 2017 that 6% of older adults were using cannabis for medical purposes.

Those who were also unemployed, older adults who said they were unmarried and had no partner, and those who said they drank alcohol, were more likely to use marijuana. Dr. Fernandez notes an especially concerning finding: People with alcohol use high enough to potentially cause physical and psychological harm were close to eight times as likely to use cannabis in the past year.

This group of dual-substance users is one that doctors and public health officials need to pay special attention to. Dr. Fernandez explains, “Other research has shown that using both alcohol and cannabis increases the chance that a person will drive while impaired. They are also more likely to have physical and mental health issues, including substance use disorders.”

It had cluttered up Jack Harris's dining table for almost eight years. Nevertheless, the 86-year-old was determined to finish his five-foot long, 5,000-piece jigsaw. And when he thought the painstaking process was complete, he stood back to admire his work, only to find one piece was missing. Mr. Harris has searched his home for the missing piece but his family fears one of their two dogs has swallowed it.

They have even asked the puzzle's manufacturer if they could provide a spare, but Mr. Harris has taken so long to complete the jigsaw that Falcon Games has stopped making it.

His daughter-in-law, Eve Harris, who gave him the jigsaw as a Christmas present, said she thought it would be a challenge for the retired businessman. Mr. Harris is given a new jigsaw every year, and usually finishes them by spring. But this puzzle was to prove different.

He said he started the jigsaw, which shows the 19th century oil painting The Return of The Prodigal Son by James Tissot, as usual. But eight years later he was still struggling to finish it.

Eve said,

We got him this one as a bit of a joke really, because he always boasted he could get them done so quickly, he's a bit of a whiz with them. It was marvelous to see it finally completed. But when we saw there was a piece missing from the middle, we just couldn't believe it. He was just so disappointed when he found one bit was missing. It's sad really because now it will never be completed.

Possible Preaching Angles:

There are at least three possible ways to use this illustration: 1) Maybe as a wince-inducing look at disappointment in life. 2) Maybe the whole "building a life yet there's a God-shaped hole" sort of thing. 3) Maybe even as a metaphor for Body life (every part is important).

Brookdale Senior Living is one of the industry's leading providers of senior adult care, with over 600 facilities across the United States. But employees have been complaining that the chain’s centralized computer system, which prioritizes efficiency, misses some of the nuance involving caring for seniors. As a result, they say, its staffing algorithms consistently understaff facilities, and the quality of care suffers.

Patricia McNeal spent six years overseeing facilities in Ohio and Florida, but was forced out after complaining to her superiors about the substandard staffing recommendations. She said, “Brookdale is handing you this thing that says, ‘This is what it says you need, hire for that.’ My eyes told me that we weren’t getting enough.”

And she’s not alone. At a facility in Florida, Brookdale recommended fewer employees than buildings on campus, making it impossible for staff to always monitor all residents. And at a facility in Texas, caregivers were given only 20 minutes to help residents undress, shower, and get dressed again, a standard they could not meet.

According to a report in The Washington Post, the problem stems from decades old research bankrolled by corporate executives looking to cut costs and maximize revenue. They timed a set of caregivers performing various tasks, then fed that data into their programming, erroneously assuming that all adults have the same needs and that those trends would never evolve over time. What resulted is a standard of low-skilled laborers performing rote tasks, treating human beings like widgets on an assembly line.

This labor model fails to account for the complexities of dealing with adults who may be facing cognitive decline. When any one task takes longer than anticipated, it subtracts time from the entire pool of available hours, which prevents some residents from receiving essential care.

In an email to her superiors, Brenda Jarmer, a director of operations in Florida, pleaded for intervention, “I cannot stress to you how bad it is … I am asking for help.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Being a wise steward of resources is important, but we should never be so concerned with efficiency and conformity that we fail to care for the weakest among us.

We may not want to admit it but author Arthur Brooks is convincing when he writes to the effect that age-related decline will come much sooner than we think. We might make excuses for ourselves but our recall of names and places is not what it used to be. He writes:

By the time you are fifty your brain is as crowded with information as the New York Public Library. Meanwhile, your personal research librarian is creaky, slow, and easily distracted. When you send him to get some information you need—say, someone’s name—he takes a minute to stand up, stops for coffee, talks to an old friend in the periodicals, and then forgets where he was going in the first place. Meanwhile, you are kicking yourself for forgetting something you have known for years. When the librarian finally shows back up and says, “That guy’s name is Mike,” Mike is long gone and you are doing something else.

Lew Wilcox and Bobby Rohrbach Jr. met in the summer of 1962, riding their bikes together in a small southern Ohio town.

These days, every Saturday, one picks the other up and they go out for breakfast, run errands, and talk about families, home repairs and how the world is changing. If one can’t remember a place or name, the other can fill in because they so often lived the same story. They didn’t outgrow the other or leave the other behind and still live within about five miles of their childhood homes. “I have a lot of friends but there’s something special about our friendship,” says Lew, 75, of his friend, Bobby, 73.

Yet as important as they are, people have fewer close friendships than they once did. Forty-percent of Americans say they don’t have a best friend at all, up from 25% in 1990. The best-friend gap is more pronounced for men, who typically have fewer close friends than women do. The percentage of men without any close friends jumped fivefold to 15% in 2021 from 3% in 1990, according to the May 2021 American Perspectives Survey.

Michael Addis, director of the Research Group on Men’s Well-Being, says, “We were taught for generations to focus on work, family, and productivity. Don’t share what is really going on inside with other men.”

Time together deepens bonds. Becoming a best friend takes 300 hours of togetherness, one study reported. Those fortunate enough to have friends through the decades develop a common history that fresh friendships often don’t.