After graduating from university, I embarked on a career to work with elite athletes.
From Olympic sprinters to NBA players, I quickly realised that maintaining an athlete’s physical and mental performance over time was a critical factor. But the real challenge was to achieve peak performance despite the inevitable effects of ageing, all while accommodating the changes in their roles and routines in their everyday lives.
To overcome this challenge, I adopted a holistic approach to the athletes’ training. I met their families, observed them at home and learned about their life outside of sport. I focused not only on the athletes at a physiological level but on their lifestyle and stressors such as relationships, children, and finances. Through this experience, I recognized the role of outside factors and how each can make a difference in performance and career longevity. Rather than advocating for more physical stimulus to increase performance, I encouraged them to pursue their personal interests and nurture relationships.
This experience helped me understand the role and importance of resilience as a fundamental part of ageing. Resilience not only strengthens us and makes us adaptable and responsive to stress and other external impacts in our lives, but it also empowers us to let go of things that hold us back, helping to preserve our identity. It is a conscious detachment from critical situations which propels us towards the future; a never-ending process that moves all things from inertia to plasticity.
This concept applies to everybody — a profound realisation I made after meeting a centenarian in my early thirties, and to whom am forever grateful. His story exemplified resilience and inspired me to work with non-athletes and accentuated the importance of doing so. This man was born with a substantial hearing impairment and his main forms of communication were sign language and lip reading. Moreover, as he aged, he developed macular degeneration — loss of eyesight – and his channels of communication further declined and were slowly taken away from him.
He had two choices: either do nothing and accept his deteriorating reality or find a way to adapt and remain functional, independent and relevant to his world. He chose the latter, and at his old age, he bought hearing aids to re-train his weak sense of hearing and live on.
As humans, we interact with our senses. If we open ourselves up to the ever-changing technological and societal developments we face, we will be ready to embrace the evolving reality that presents itself in various shapes and forms. By letting go of inertia we can move towards plasticity.
Plasticity is a form of adaptability. It is the ability of an organism, a human being, and a group or a society, to remain flexible and adapt to a continuously changing environment. The dialectic that moves all things to plasticity affects all aspects of life and nothing is exempt: cells, individuals, cities, culture, society, and nature. When the various layers and systems of life — from cells to society — move or begin to move towards plasticity, they are truly advancing towards resilience.
Of course, many people only start to prioritise their health when things start to slip, in much the same way that anti-ageing protocols are often only applied when the effects of biological ageing begin to manifest. Ideally this process would start much earlier in life which is why societal constructs are crucial; building resilience is connected to the interplay between microcosm and macrocosm.
The American Psychological Association defined resilience as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress”. Yet, this is only one definition of resilience, as the term can mean different things in different contexts and include a host of biological, psychological, social, and cultural factors that interact with one another, similar to a microcosm/macrocosm view of the world.
In biology, plasticity is the ability of individual genotypes to produce different phenotypes in response to different environmental conditions (phenotypic plasticity). In this context, the attribute of being plastic refers to the shift in an organism’s behaviour, morphology, and physiology in response to a unique environment that may or may not be permanent throughout its lifespan.
Although people are ultimately responsible for their own health at an individual level, engraining certain behaviours within a societal structure will encourage people to think about their health from a younger age.
But how do we build resilient societies and engrain these behaviours in the first place? It is a broad topic with many layers of complexity: individual, environmental, socio-economic, and financial, to name a few. Firstly, resilient societies should prioritise health over immediate gratification. Nutrition, better sleep, less screen time, and detoxing are all positive habits and behaviours that can drive change and build resilience. To develop more resilient societies, we need to start at the cellular level by building healthy and resilient individuals, and then scale up to larger groups and societies by providing the right tools for a stronger and more harmonious collective.
When we move on to look at urban development, for instance, we should focus on creating healthy cities and environments by asking ourselves these questions: “Are our environments enhancing or inhibiting social interactions between social groups and individuals? Do cities contribute to building resilient societies, and how can they integrate into a resilient environment?”
A resilient society should include, integrate, and protect its different social and generational groups. It should foster the homogeneity of heterogeneous collectives and protect potential fragility. Fragility can assume different forms but one of them is undoubtedly the growing ageing population. To integrate any group into a society and protect it, we first need to understand the population’s needs.
For instance, let’s take the design of a new city. When we look at the architectural plans, are they devised to foster a cohesive community, prioritise the collective good and protect the most vulnerable? Or do they unintendingly create loneliness and division between heterogeneous groups?
Consider a simple example. What if, following urban redevelopment, a little bench on the shore of a lake is removed to make space for a bigger boat dock? Will this decision bring people closer together, encourage connection with nature, and enhance resilience, or will it contribute to isolation and poor health? If I loved sitting on that bench to contemplate the lake and mountains, what are the consequences of this decision? Absent the bench, I am likely to stay at home without exposure to sunlight, and possibly be alone, rather than walking to the lake to meet other people. We need to put people at the centre of these decisions, zoom in on their needs, and give meaning to their time.
Let’s also reflect on the interactions between different age groups. How will a growing population of centenarians connect and interact with people who are born and raised in a tech-driven world where AI is becoming integral to everything we do? We must retrain and broaden our way of thinking. The pace of social evolution should catch up with our technological evolution while protecting our values and ethics — AI should be our co-pilot, not our predominant decision-maker. Our goal as humans is not only to live longer but to live those years successfully, although it is difficult to define precisely what “successful ageing” is, as this is unique for everyone.
A resilient society is ultimately a healthy, happy society where different generations interact with one another. A growing ageing population doesn’t wish to be a burden but wants to be integrated and contribute to society. Maintaining supportive environments, strong social connections, and participating in community activities can enhance mental and emotional health, providing support and a sense of belonging. Embracing these concepts leads to a more resilient, vibrant, and flourishing society where individuals can thrive amidst the complexities and uncertainties of life.
Creating a resilient society must start with individuals who have nurtured their physical and psychological well-being. Supported by a society that instils positive behaviours early and often, these individuals are given the opportunity to grow and develop from a young age. As they mature, they play a crucial role in fostering resilience within their families, neighbourhoods, communities, political systems, and economic institutions. Additionally, they remain mindful of and contribute to the preservation of the natural environment that sustains us all.
Our bodies have the potential to live for up to 120 years, but how do we identify the exact practices to achieve this? Community leaders, policymakers, doctors, and hospitals should serve as agents of resilient education, providing the foundation for optimising health, managing life stressors, and enhancing quality of life. While resilience is not yet quantifiable, we need to develop screening methods to understand its impacts so we can implement the behaviour changes which can make the critical difference — both for ourselves and society.
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