Credit: Markus Kammermann
Keep your brain young. It’s never too late. There’s a world out there waiting for you, gorgeous in its buffet.
You’ve heard of neuroplasticity—that the brain can rewire itself? Yes, it’s true: everything you think, everything you do, triggers new neuroconnections, along with revamping older ones. The more you focus on something new, the more your brain gets good at making it easier for you to comprehend and make part of your daily routine.
I learned Spanish in my 80s. I read a book each week, new gleanings with every read, new brain wrinkles, the kind you want.
Your brain likes exercise, just like Fido.
Free online courses opened up whole worlds I’d never touched—from the ecosystems of the Amazon to feminist poetry, and even a Yale module on oncology.
New conversations. New friends.
Widened empathy, walking in another’s shoes.
Forrest Gump tells us, “Life is like a box of cħocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” That’s true, but part of the excitement is getting to choose.
For me, life is like doing a jigsaw puzzle, putting the pieces in place. Isn’t that a lot of what life’s about?
Growing older doesn’t have to mean the doldrums. A rocking chair, endless TV, nostalgia about the past.
Grandma Moses took up painting seriously at 77. You know the story.
Frank McCourt of Angela’s Ashes fame, was 66 when he wrote it, winning a Pulitzer.
I can give you tons more examples.
Forming new habits isn’t easy. For me, I’ve found it takes six weeks to lock-in a new habit, consistency a key. Apart from illness, I never miss a Spanish read or showing up week after week, quietly writing nearly 700 essays.
Venturing new things, replacing bad habits, mindlessly practiced with better ones, isn’t easy.
Think of it this way: There’s a fatty substance in the brain known as myelin that wraps itself around your neural connectors, augmenting faster signaling, or what we might call automatic response pathways.
Everything you do repeatedly digs the pathway deeper, which is why bad habits are sometimes hard to break. Your brain fights you at first. It likes to automate behavior and conserve energy. It’s simply doing what evolution designed it to do.
You are what you think and do. Your brain, in turn, creates cravings accordingly. You like munching on Ruffles? The brain makes that easy.
Ridding yourself of bad habits doesn’t come down to will power. It’s in the doing, starting simply, sometimes like children in their first stumbling steps, but with repeated tries, succeeding.
The brain gets the message. You’ve built a new highway. Like Route 66, the old highway no longer gets traffic.
Believe me, I’ve done what I’ve counseled. That it works I know from its results.
Each day, I wake to my chosen pathway. The joy of the psalmist comes to mind: “The lines are fallen upon me in pleasant places” (Ps.16:6 KJV).
I may be ripe in years, but I am the happiest I’ve ever been.
—rj
Brimmings: up from the well 