Looking through our The Official OFC members selfie thread always reminds me how old you all are… but when we’re talking on the forum, you all come across as younger, so I forget!
The actual years I’ve lived, it seems I’ve experienced so much, no I don’t forget…
Then, I am amazed that these years have held me up so well…
except for those darn somersaults…
Fortunately, there are moments when that is the case and I love them, especially those when I can still do something that I wouldn’t have done much differently when I was considerably younger like cycling. I can still take my bike and cycle down town or to the supermarket as I did, say, 50 years ago, which fascinates me. And I’m not the only one. A few years ago, while visiting my hometown, I spotted a guy on a bike who, because of his peculiar position on it, immediately reminded me of an old friend of mine whom I had lost contact with. What shall I say, it was him. He, too, hadn’t changed in this respect and was still enjoying himself as we did decades ago. Thanks for making me cherish these precious moments even more, Azz.
Glad to hear it Dachs… and maybe this thread (and your experience) could be our own little counterclockwise study
The Counterclockwise Study
For her experiment, Langer accompanied a group of eight elderly men in their 70s to a residential retreat that was set up to recreate the social-physical environment of 1959.
Her question was: If we turn the clock back psychologically, can we also do it physically?
As Langer explained in her Happiness and Its Causes presentation, the experiment started somewhat inadvertently the moment the group arrived at the retreat. The elderly men had brought heavy suitcases for the week-long stay, and with only Langer there to assist them, they had no choice but to carry their bulky luggage on their own.
What seemed like an oversight at first—not having younger, stronger people present to help unload things—actually set a precedent for the entire retreat. The elderly men couldn’t take a defeatist attitude, or else their suitcases would have been left in the van.
Despite their advanced age, the group successfully hauled the luggage into a residence that was actually more like a time machine. They spent the week sequestered there, in 1959, speaking in the present tense about the past while truly living, believing and behaving as though the clock had turned back two decades. They didn’t simply remember what life was like in 1959—they lived it.
They listened to Perry Como and Jack Benny songs on a 1950s radio. They watched Ed Sullivan on a black-and-white television. They discussed current events, watched movies, flipped through magazines, and even dressed like it was two decades prior. There weren’t any mirrors in the house to disrupt the illusion, either; the only reminders the men had about their appearance were portraits they’d brought of their younger selves.
Outside that residence, it was still 1979.
But inside it, the eight elderly men involved in Langer’s experiment became young again. And by the end of the week, their physical health reflected that psychological reversal of time: they showed substantial improvements in flexibility, dexterity, memory, hearing, posture, cognitive ability and general wellbeing. They even looked younger to outside observers who were shown photos of them before and after the experiment.
Someone once tried to remind me of just how old I was, but I thought that that can’t be right since I’m sure I was at a Pizza Hut with my children at the time.