I’m not brainy, but my 72 years give me an edge over younger people

“Welcome to The Wonder Years” read the message on the front of the birthday card sent to my partner, who turned 70 last week. “You wonder where your glasses are,” it continued. “You wonder where your phone is. You wonder where your keys are.” Cheesy, yes. But it made me smile in recognition, because wondering is what he does, often. At 72, me too, loath as I am to admit it.

But even as the memory lapses mount, mild cognitive decline takes hold, and those moments when I feel flustered or confused in a way that feels unfamiliar increase, there is also a significant sense of feeling smarter than ever I felt when I was young. 

In my 20s, even though I was doing well in my job and getting rapid promotions, I had a chronic case of imposter syndrome. A couple of months ago I was asked to do a PowerPoint presentation for a project I was working on and I realised, though I’d never in all my working life had to use Powerpoint, it couldn’t be beyond me. 

And it did terrify me at first but after a brief tutorial from a friend, I mastered the basics, and was rather pleased with my presentation – and myself. But it wasn’t the slides or conquering the tech which made me feel smart. It was the provocative images of art that I had chosen to enliven it with. Inspired by items in my own home to works by famous artists I carried in my head, I was able to draw on my knowledge about art to drive home the points I wanted to make. 

A young man in my group who was in his early 30s, was impressed. “I don’t know the first thing about art,” he said.

I certainly don’t consider myself to be especially clever but a lifetime’s accumulation of skills and experience will generally give most of us the smartness edge over younger people even when we lack their inbuilt speed for processing new information and ideas. My long and lasting love affair with art and art history began with gallery visits in my 20s and was enhanced with courses and various studies from my 50s onwards.

Call it common sense, stored knowledge, having learnt from one’s mistakes, there are many ways to define what’s smart and what’s not. And when it comes to something like art it’s about being hungry to learn, formally or informally, which you can carry on doing throughout your lifespan. Best of all, once you’re retired, or working less, at your own pace.

Now there’s even some hard, cold science to back – and buck – us up when it comes to cognitive functioning in later life. Two pieces of good news have emerged from research by Stephen Badham, a psychology professor at Nottingham Trent University. The first is that the gap in brain performance between the young and old is on the wane, and the second that over-65s are smarter than the average older person was in 1980. This is partly because the IQ gains once seen in each new generation – improvements attributed to better education, diet and general health – appear to have stalled, but also that the decline an individual might expect to experience as they become older is getting smaller. 

In other words, Badham states with reference to his paper published in the journal Developmental Review, “we can expect to be more cognitively able than our grandparents were when we reach their age”.

It’s the depth of experience that makes me more sure-footed. Two broken marriages and the part I played have taught me that relationships are hard work, and you have to put in the hours rather than let issues fester. Illness – both mental and physical – have made me aware that it’s OK to be vulnerable, and to share that vulnerability with others. Becoming a ‘step’ grandparent to my partner’s two grandkids has enabled me to put into perspective the things their devoted, but sometimes anxious and harassed mothers, fret about. And I’ve become a much better listener than when I was young, no longer rushing in to get my voice heard, but hearing others’ perspectives before I offer my own.

What we oldies lack in speed of thinking we surely make up for in resilience. We’ve survived the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in our personal lives, and from the resilience acquired. From bereavements and illness to marriage break-ups and job losses, the list is lengthy. Then there’s been the business of becoming parents, grandparents, even great grandparents, and learning that life goes on even when your body starts acting as though it’s giving up on you. What average 20-something can compete with all that? 

It’s common for older people to feel dismissed and ignored by the young but sometimes I wonder if we are partly to blame. For example, I sometimes play the helpless card with my son when it comes to technology. And when I reach for his advice, without having tried to work it out for myself first, he refuses until I prove to him that I’ve at least given it a proper go. And that way I learn. It’s tough love, but it keeps me on my toes. Far from writing me off, as sometimes the younger generation do, he is determined for me to prove to myself that I’m more capable than I think I am.

I hear fellow oldies complain that young people are simply not interested in them, and never ask them anything about their lives. In order to reframe the culture, and knock stereotypes about older people being less smart, less interesting, on the head, we need to mix up the generations more, to acquaint ourselves better.

In recent weeks I’ve been in the lucky position of celebrating two family milestone birthdays, each restricted to immediate and extended family, and in each case with three generations involved. For the first, my sister’s 75th, we rented a place in Sicily for the week, and the 12 of us ranged in age from 13 to 80. The next, for my partner’s 70th, involved a weekend in Suffolk with his two daughters from his previous marriage and their small children, as well as my son and his partner. The communication between us all on both occasions was mostly effortless. 

At one point I asked my son’s partner, who is Chinese and in his 30s, if he wasn’t getting a bit fed up spending so much time with all these oldies. “To the contrary,” he said, “I love it,” and he reminded me that in his country of origin older people are respected, listened to and learned from. 

Perhaps, as we age, we even have a duty to keep ourselves interesting, to look outwards rather than inwards, to be open to refreshing our views before we can expect young people to want to engage with us. 

Sometimes smartness in later life is less about pin-sharp cognitive functioning and more about not sweating the small stuff. About a year ago I was taking a university foundation course in counselling and psychotherapy. Our WhatsApp group became particularly lively at essay deadline time with general panic breaking out. Most of the group were in their 20s to 40s. I cut through the anxious chatter with basic advice about how to write an essay which they were quite capable of working out for themselves, but had lost sight of in the pandemonium. “Phew,” said one. “Thanks so much,” said another. But best of all came from a 28-year-old on the course who announced: “When I grow up I want to be like Linda.”

Older and smarter?  You bet. And as for my keys, I’m pretty sure I left them on the hall table. Why they’re not there now is a total mystery.