One reason we tend to lose cognitive abilities as we get older is that we often stop putting ourselves in situations where we’re forced to learn, according to psychological research. But when there are children to care for, bills to pay and work to do, who really can blame us? It’s just easier to cook the same things, go to the same workout class, and follow the same morning routine.
But this summer is challenging my stuck-in-the-mudness. My family and I are spending five weeks in London for my husband’s job. It’s a stark enough difference from our home in Texas to offer a reminder of what a real learning curve feels like.
I struggled to work the induction stove while hangry children gathered around. The microwave? Forget it. Then I realized I was putting laundry detergent in the fabric softener slot, which would explain why all the laundry came out looking worse than when it went in. The kids and I are adjusting to life with no air conditioning, no car and — worst of all — no breakfast tacos.
Within the first week, each of the children had at least one outburst about wanting to go home. I didn’t have the same tantrums (out loud). But I was exhausted in an old familiar way. The way I remember feeling after college exams, when you sleep until 11 a.m. the morning after. Or how I felt visiting the grandparents after we had our first baby.
And it’s been life-giving. There’s something about being dropped into an unfamiliar environment that feels akin to being a child. It fosters a sense of wonder and independence. All the difficulty and frustration of learning new things create an equal and opposite high.
Then came my design class at a local university. I enrolled on a whim; I’ve never taken a design class in my life, though it’s something I’ve always enjoyed.
But being a novice smarted. I found myself struggling to use a scale ruler, draw lighting circuits, and put together color schemes that went beyond creams and neutrals. I realized that I took a bit more pride than I might have thought in my professional accomplishments. Let me tell you, insight into American politics is not really a conversation starter in European design.
Yet tackling it gave me a hit of accomplishment and conquest that I hadn’t felt in a long time. That I didn’t even know I was missing.
It turns out that learning multiple new things at once is a powerful source of mental rejuvenation as we age, according to a recent NIH study. To study this, participants ranging from ages 58 to 86 were enrolled in three college courses in subjects in which they had no experience (Spanish, drawing, music theory and so on). By the end of the term, the participants’ cognitive abilities were similar to those enrolling in the course for the first time who were 30 years younger. One year after the courses had ended, their cognitive abilities continued to improve, reaching the levels of undergraduates.
I wonder if missing out on this kind of learning could be part of the reason for the universal drop in happiness that happens in our 40s. Not only are there weighty demands and hormonal changes in midlife, but there’s not the bump of learning new skills on the other side of the ledger.
That’s how I’ve experienced the onset of midlife. I’ve had babies, settled down into a career, fixed up a house, invested in a marriage. These are all great blessings, and they come with learning curves of their own.
But my newness meter has dropped. These days it’s mostly about new books or returning to old hobbies like tennis, but not learning multiple new things at once in the immersive sense of young adulthood or even being a new mother.
By and large, I know how to use my kitchen appliances, which side of the street to watch for cars, how to pronounce place names and do all of the other things that have challenged me overseas the last month, shaking me out of my routine.
Now, I don’t believe that the solution to midlife malaise is a federal grant program to send every burnt-out American on a sabbatical to Europe. Nor is it abandoning the stability we’ve spent our adulthood building.
But I do think it requires a deliberate rejection of the hyper-curated comforts we turn toward the older we get. As we age, we perceive time as more limited and thus become more selective in investing our time and resources. This, even though intellectual curiosity and new experiences have a number of positive outcomes, including better physical, intellectual, emotional and social well-being.
Friction is something to pursue, not run from. Especially in our age of digital algorithms that feed us everything we already prefer — middle age on steroids.
Or so this Texas mom is telling herself in London.
Abby McCloskey is a columnist, podcast host, and consultant. She directed domestic policy on two presidential campaigns and was director of economic policy at the American Enterprise Institute.