30 lessons for living : tried and true advice from the wisest americans

188 Pages·2014·1.8 MB·English

by  Pillemer

A PLUME BOOK
PLUME
Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York
10014, USA

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First Plume Printing 2012
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA Copyright © Karl Pillemer, 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this product may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or
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THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HUDSON STREET PRESS EDITION AS
FOLLOWS: Pillemer, Karl A.
30 lessons for living : tried and true advice from the wisest Americans / Karl Pillemer.
p. cm.
Includes biographical references.
eISBN 978-1-10154585-0
1. Older people—United States—Attitudes. 2. Old age. 3. Aging. 4. Happiness. 5. Conduct of life. I. Title.
II. Title: Thirty lessons for living.
HQ1064.U5P55 2011
305.260973—dc23 2011017113
Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Foreword
A Note on Names

CHAPTER 1 - Who Are the Wisest Americans and What Can They Tell Us?
CHAPTER 2 - Great Together
CHAPTER 3 - Glad to Get Up in the Morning
CHAPTER 4 - Nobody’s Perfect
CHAPTER 5 - Find the Magic
CHAPTER 6 - I Can Look Everyone in the Eye
CHAPTER 7 - Choose Happiness
CHAPTER 8 - The Last Lesson

TEN QUESTIONS TO ASK THE EXPERTS IN YOUR LIFE
APPENDIX - How the Study Was Done
NOTES
To Clare, Hannah, and Sarah, for teaching me my most important lessons for
living
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS PROJECT TOOK PLACE over five years and involved collecting
information from more than a thousand older Americans. Over that period of
time, I received invaluable help, support, and encouragement from a large
number of individuals and organizations. It is a pleasure to acknowledge them
here.
I am most indebted to those I call in this book the “experts” on living, the
people who donated their time and their thoughts freely and openly. There is no
way to repay them for providing the raw material on which this book is based; I
can only hope that I have conveyed their lessons for living as they would have
wanted it done.
I am very grateful to the individuals who assisted in collecting the data. The
Cornell University Survey Research Institute—led by Yasamin Miller, director,
and Darren Hearn, manager—was a joy to work with. Special thanks are due to
interviewers Vanessa McCaffery, Chris Dietrich, Chelsea Fenush, and Curtis
Miller, who cheerfully unlearned the rules of standardized survey research to
have deep and intimate conversations with the interviewees, laughing and
sometimes crying with them. Linda Finlay also conducted a number of in-depth
interviews and contributed important insights throughout the project. Leslie
Schultz carried out many complex management tasks, keeping the interviews
and data files organized and easy to use.
I am indebted to past and present members of my research team who assisted
in identifying interviewees, transcribing interviews, providing ideas, coding, and
related tasks: Dr. Myra Sabir, Helene Rosenblatt, Emily Parise, Mimi Baveye,
Dr. Rhoda Meador, Esther Greenhouse, and Noreen Rizvi, as well as the Cornell
undergraduates who conducted pilot interviews for the study.
I would like to thank the many individuals and organizations who sought out
and nominated elders for interviews. Dr. Kevin O’Neil and Sara Terry of
Brookdale Senior Living produced, from their communities across the country,
an extraordinary set of interviewees for the project. Dr. Mark Lachs and Dr.
Cary Reid of the Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology at the Weill Cornell
Medical College introduced me to interesting New Yorkers, as did Mary Ballin
of the Irving Sherwood Wright Center on Aging. I am also grateful to the
following individuals at the New York City senior centers that assisted with the
project: Josie Piper, Central Harlem Senior Citizens Coalition; Chan Jamoona
project: Josie Piper, Central Harlem Senior Citizens Coalition; Chan Jamoona
and Vidya Jamoona, United Hindu Cultural Council Senior Center; Julia
Schwartz-Leeper, Riverdale Senior Services; Nancy Miller, Visions/Services for
the Blind and Visually Impaired; and Bill Dionne, the Carter Burden Center for
the Aging. They taught me an important lesson about aging: support your local
senior center!
Other individuals provided excellent suggestions for interviewees. My
undergraduate mentor, gerontologist Ruth Harriet Jacobs, offered not only
advice on the book but a number of excellent interviewees. Rosalie Muschal-
Reinhardt and Elly Katz pointed me toward interviewees involved in “Sage-ing”
activities. David Pomeranz from the Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale
introduced me to a number of residents there. Staff from the Office for the Aging
in a number of New York counties and the Cornell Cooperative Extension
system helped in the search for the wisest elders.
Several individuals provided invaluable help by reviewing all or part of the
manuscript. Peter Wolk and Risa Breckman far exceeded the duties of friendship
by providing invaluable feedback at critical stages. Sheri Hall offered many
insightful comments throughout the writing process.
I am immensely grateful to my agent, Janis Donnaud, who several years ago
listened to a semicoherent phone call about my idea and told me that, yes, she
did think there might be a book in there somewhere. Without her assistance, 30
Lessons for Living would never have seen the light of day. I would also like to
acknowledge my editor at Hudson Street Press, Caroline Sutton, whose
insightful comments made the book much better.
Finally, writing this book proved to be a family affair to a greater extent than I
had anticipated, from reading the manuscript to offering opinions on production
details. My wife, Clare McMillan, lent both her extraordinary editorial skills and
her unflagging support to the project. My daughters, Hannah Pillemer and Sarah
Pillemer, and son-in-law, Michael Civille, read drafts and provided me with
young people’s perspectives on the lessons. I am also blessed with an extended
family that includes people with many areas of expertise relevant to the book,
including two physicians, a research dietician, a family therapist, and a
developmental psychologist. For lengthy discussions as well as willingness to
listen to my angst when needed, I am grateful to David Pillemer, Stephen
Pillemer, Eric Pillemer, Jane Pillemer, Helen Rasmussen, and Julianna Pillemer.
FOREWORD
HOW MANY TIMES HAVE you said—or thought—“if only”? If only I knew
then what I know now. If only I’d followed a different life course. If only I was
better schooled on how to be a good parent… or spouse… or friend. If only I’d
taken Spanish… or statistics… or flower arranging.
Hindsight, almost by definition, is easier than foresight. But wouldn’t it be
wonderful if we could see ahead well enough into the future to make the right
choices and follow the wisest paths before it’s too late?
The book you hold in your hands can help to give you that crystal ball. It is
rich in insights from those who have been there before you, insights that can
help you pursue a fulfilling life course that is relatively free of regrets and
missed opportunities.
Eventually, many of us learn some valuable lessons on how to conduct a
successful and satisfying life. But far too often, the learning comes too late to
provide life-enhancing guidance that would have helped people avoid painful
mistakes or decades of wasted time and effort.
In recent years, for example, many talented young people have denied their
true passions, choosing instead to pursue careers that promise fast and big
monetary gains. High rates of divorce speak to an impulsiveness to marry and a
tenuous commitment to vows of “’til death do us part.”
Parents undermine children’s self-confidence and self-esteem by punishing
them physically or pushing them down paths, both academic and athletic, that
they are ill-equipped to follow.
And myriad prescriptions for antidepressants and antianxiety drugs reflect a
widespread tendency to sweat the small stuff, a failure to recognize time-
honored sources of happiness, and a reliance on material acquisitions that
provide only temporary pleasure.
Karl Pillemer, a sociologist well schooled in gerontology, recognized the
wisdom that all too often dies when life comes to an end, and chose instead to
retrieve valuable insights from people who have “been there, done that” while
they are still able to reflect on both the right moves and the mistakes they’ve
made in the course of seven or more decades of life.
Professor Pillemer and his assistants extracted practical advice from more than
one thousand older Americans from different economic, educational, and
occupational strata who were interviewed as part of the ongoing Cornell Legacy
occupational strata who were interviewed as part of the ongoing Cornell Legacy
Project. He calls his subjects “the experts,” the “wisest Americans” whose
advice on topics ranging from marriage and careers to parenting and aging is
based on both what they did right and what they did wrong during their long
lives.
While lifestyles and attitudes necessarily differ from one interviewee to
another—and none are likely to fit hand-in-glove into another person’s life—
their words can serve as a stimulus to take stock of your current circumstances
and perhaps help you chart a modified, and more promising, life course.
I was especially struck by what these wise elders had to say about happiness.
Almost to a person, they viewed happiness as a choice, not the result of how life
treats you. Even if nine decades long, life was seen by the elders as too short to
waste on pessimism, boredom, and disillusionment.
As a seventy-five-year-old man put it, “You are not responsible for all the
things that happen to you, but you are completely in control of your attitude and
your reactions to them.” An eighty-four-year-old echoed this sentiment, saying,
“Adopt a policy of being joyful.”
Perhaps most telling, though, were the comments of those who could easily
have lapsed into a lifetime of self-pity and failure. Instead, the ninety-year-old
daughter of divorced parents who lived a hardscrabble life said, “I learned to be
grateful for what I have, and no longer bemoan what I don’t have or can’t do.”
I admit that the words of the “wisest Americans” resonated especially strongly
with me because I had decided at age seventeen to live each day as if it could be
my last, but with a watchful eye on the future in case it wasn’t. My life goal—to
die without regrets—was motivated by my mother’s untimely death from cancer
at age forty-nine.
Dr. Pillemer’s elders recommended that people take advantage of
opportunities, take risks, and embrace new challenges. As a ninety-year-old man
I recently interviewed put it, “Fake it until you make it.” This man, William
Richmond of Calabasas, California, learned in the course of four years as a pilot
in the Marines “that I could conquer anything I went after.” For example, he’d
been given a drum to play in middle school and, without having a single lesson,
kept at it until he got good enough to play in a big band, at which point he
decided to take some lessons and ended up playing for Peggy Lee, Ella
Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and Jerry Lewis. This, in turn, led to Mr. Richmond
writing jokes for Mr. Lewis, then writing his movies.
Mr. Richmond endorses the approach to job and career expressed by Dr.
Pillemer’s elders. Not one person in a thousand said that happiness accrued from
working as hard as you can to make money to buy whatever you want. Rather,
working as hard as you can to make money to buy whatever you want. Rather,
the near-universal view was stated by an eighty-three-year-old former athlete
who worked for decades as an athletic coach and recruiter: “The most important
thing is to be involved in a profession that you absolutely love, and that you look
forward to going to work to every day.”
Of course, how children are treated at home can make a huge difference in
their willingness to accept challenges and break molds. “I’d always been a
jokester,” Mr. Richmond told me. When at age eight he was sent home from
school with a note for his father saying he was disrupting the class by making all
the children laugh, his father charged off to the school and “quietly explained to
them that making people laugh was not a crime.”
Too often these days economic pursuits limit the time parents spend with their
children. Dr. Pillemer’s elders said parental-child interaction is most important,
even if you must sacrifice financial rewards to make it happen. They
recommended that parents share in their children’s activities and do things
together that interest them.
And, with or without children, the elders said, travel more when you’re young.
You may wait too long if you wait to travel when the children are grown or you
are retired. I started traveling with my twin sons when they were nine and
continued to travel with them whenever and wherever my finances allowed until
they were grown and married. We’re still doing it, now with four grandchildren
in tow.
As Dr. Pillemer summarized the elders’ view, “Travel is so rewarding that it
should take precedence over other things younger people spend money on.” My
suggestion: Create a bucket list and start whittling it down when you’re young.
The hours you spend with this book can help direct you to a most rewarding
lifetime. There is so much to learn from the elders in our lives. It should not be
necessary for every generation to reinvent the wheel.

—JANE E. BRODY
Personal health columnist, The New York Times