The joys of aging

Many aspects of society and culture can lead us to negative feelings about aging—but there’s a lot to celebrate. In this episode, we connect with Lisa Sharfstein, director of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, to discuss many of the wonderful aspects of getting older, and the opportunities that arise as we reach new age milestones throughout our lifetimes.

Related to this episode:

• Osher Lifelong Learning Institute | University of Pittsburgh
• Longevity increased by positive self-perceptions of aging - PubMed (nih.gov)
• How Optimism About Aging Can Benefit Your Health - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
• Learning to Love Midlife - Chip Conley

 

Episode transcript

Ellen

Stronger communities begin with good health—for everyone.

You’re listening to the “Good Health, Better World” podcast from UPMC Health Plan. This season, we’re exploring the joys, challenges, and opportunities associated with healthy aging. We’ll talk about what it means to age well; how to care for body, mind, and spirit as we get older; and the tools and programs available to ensure a good life, throughout life.

I’m your host, Dr. Ellen Beckjord. Let’s get started.

Well, I am so excited to talk with Lisa Sharfstein today about the joys of aging. We will discuss many wonderful aspects of growing older and lots of opportunities that arise as we go through life. So, Lisa, thank you so much for joining us on “Good Health, Better World.”

Lisa

It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Ellen

Even though this is an episode about the joys of aging, maybe we can start sort of with the flip side, which is that it seems like most people have a negative connotation associated with aging. Or when they think about aging, they might feel a sense of worry or concern or even dread.

Tell us a little bit about what you've observed regarding that, in the position that you hold.

Lisa

Well, as director of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, I certainly think about aging quite a bit. I think it's so interesting when you think about the lifespan and you think about kids and how eager they are to get older, they want to be old enough to cross the street by themselves. They want to be old enough to ride the roller coaster, or then even later to get a job, move out, become independent. But there's a shift, and we go from anticipating and looking forward to aging, to looking back and, you know, kind of wishing we could recapture youth. And it's really interesting, especially in our society, in Western societies, there really is a lot of negativity associated with aging, even to the point where we can say there's a lot of ageism, where there's discrimination and difficulties associated with people who are older.

And it's really prevalent in our culture. If you think about the multi-billion-dollar anti-aging industrial complex where, you know, you have to have a certain color hair, thicker hair, more hair, wrinkles, anti-aging this, anti-aging this. You have to dress younger. You have to do this to be younger. There's so much focus on youth and so much negativity associated with aging. That is really quite unfortunate because truly aging is a natural and beautiful part of the lifespan. Just like we wouldn't resist like, adolescence is coming—"you've got to fight it”—you know, we shouldn't resist aging. It's part of life. It's part of living. So it is unfortunate that there is so much negativity associated with aging, but there's a lot we can do about that.

Ellen

Absolutely. And it's such a privilege to even get to grow older, I think, as well.

Lisa

Yes, absolutely.

When we talk about how aging is viewed very negatively and that a lot of people have this idea of resisting aging, that we must fight aging, the physical aspects, the mental aspects of aging, it makes me think of some advice I got when I was pregnant and I was meeting with a doula, someone to help me through the childbirth process. And she said that a mistake a lot of women make is when a contraction comes, you brace yourself, you tense, you resist it, you fight it, you dread it. It's coming, and you just can't stand the thought of it.

And she said, you need to change your mindset and be accepting of that contraction. It's going to come. Whether you're resisting it or not, it's coming. So, if you embrace it, and to me, that not just helped in childbirth, but it helps in so many aspects of life. Don't resist it. It's natural. Embrace it and see where it's going to take you.

Ellen

I love that. Resistance is its own form of suffering, and there are things that that are painful, that are difficult. Childbirth is certainly challenging and painful, and difficult parts of aging you mentioned. As much as getting to live longer and longer is a privilege, for people who go through that experience, they also have more and more loss as they go through. These things are not easy. I don't mean to suggest, and I'm sure you don't either, that aging is a piece of cake. But always, you know, resisting something, whether it's difficult or not, creates this like independent additional layer of suffering, which is one of the only things in a difficult situation we can try to control or augment is to say, well, at least if I try to engage in some nonresistance, I can eliminate or lessen that piece of the difficulty.

Lisa

And what's really interesting is just changing your mindset has such powerful consequences. So research has shown that by looking at aging in a positive way rather than in a negative way, just by changing your mindset, can actually add seven years of life. It can additionally add to your longevity if you embrace aging and look at it positively. And seven years is more lifespan than if you were 50 and you stopped smoking. Or if you were 50 and you started exercising suddenly. You'll actually gain more years to your life just by thinking about aging in a positive way. Isn't that amazing?

Ellen

That is. That is absolutely. That is absolutely amazing.

Before we jump into specifics about the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and your role there, which I definitely want to get to soon, let's just talk at a general level, maybe ending with time to do more learning, about some of the privileges that come with getting older and some of the privileges and degrees of freedom that people have as older adults.

Lisa

Absolutely. Life does not get any easier as we age. We still have challenges. We still have losses. There's still difficulties to get through. But older people have more tools to address those challenges, and they have more lived experience. They have more perspectives. So dealing with the bumps and the hardships that life throws at us can be easier when you're older and you have that lived experience. That's certainly a privilege of aging.

Aging actually allows you to become more comfortable in your own skin. I just talked about how everybody is, you know, chasing youth and wants to be younger and wants to have no wrinkles. But when you get to an age and you've lived with yourself long enough, you just start to become more comfortable and accepting both of your physical self but also of other parts of ourselves, and you just become more comfortable with yourself.

Some researchers say you just care much less about what other people think. Other people's opinions don't matter as much anymore when you get older as they are so important when you're younger. So, I think that's definitely a privilege of aging.

Another thing is, as people get older, they become richer in time, time affluence. So, you have time to dedicate to those relationships that sustain us: your family, your friends. You have time to volunteer in your community, to serve your community, to be an active part of your community. You've got time to think about yourself and about your own hobbies, your own interests, what gives you joy. And learning, which we will certainly speak about. So having that time to be able to expand yourself in those aspects is really important.

Chip Conley, who's the author of a great book called Learning to Love Midlife, says that busyness is a form of poverty because you keep yourself so busy and you lose the time that you need to cultivate relationships, to think about your own interests, your own desires, working on your own, you know, self, and being able to be in community. So by keeping too busy, it results in making us poorer in the time that we have to spend with others. So, time is certainly a privilege of aging.

Also getting off the success treadmill. When we are young, it's all about achieving and, you know, expanding our careers, expanding our lives. And sometimes it's a hedonic treadmill that we just can't get off. And when you think about that image of a treadmill, you're really staying in one place. Even though it feels like you're progressing, you're really not going anywhere. So being able to step off and say, hey, I'm going to take a look around, I'm going to appreciate nature, I'm going to appreciate what I have achieved and look ahead—that's certainly a privilege of aging.

Retirement, of course, is a big transition. And when we stop our careers or end our careers or transition out of our careers, that that can be difficult for some people when that's been their focus for so long. But it can also be a wonderful opportunity—an opportunity to learn, to discover what's next in the next chapter. Because people are fortunate enough to be living so much longer, instead of looking at our lives as a three-act play, we now can say it's maybe a four-act play, and when you're in the middle, you've got still so much to look forward to.

Ellen

Oh, I love that. You mentioned changing your mindset. So, I always find the research and conversations about growth versus fixed mindset really interesting. And as I listen to you talk about aging, the idea of not resisting aging, shifting your mindset into one of positivity around aging, or at least curiosity. I mean, that's another big one for me too. Like if you if you give up resistance, I think sometimes it can be challenging for people who feel like your options are either to like, fight something or embrace it. But I feel like curiosity is what exists in the middle, and it's—curiosity is fairly neutral. You know, you don't have to be super excited about something to be curious about it or even optimistic about it to be curious about it.

So, creating that space of curiosity about aging, do you think that that's implicit in the idea of having a growth mindset around aging, and this idea of there being four acts instead of only three acts in a lifetime?

I mean, the whole proposition around aging, because of so many advancements in medicine and ways that, for many people, not all, but for many people, life expectancy has increased. I mean, there's a lot to be curious about and a lot to potentially glean from having a growth mindset about aging rather than a fixed mindset of, I know what this means, and it means mostly negative things.

And it's going to, you know, result in the end of my life. But more of a growth mindset. Are people coming around to that idea in your view?

Lisa

I think so, and I think that idea of a growth mindset is a really powerful tool that we can have to take control over our own aging process. And I think that things are changing.

If you think way back to that old sitcom, The Golden Girls, and they were four women living in a Florida home, retired and aging—they were in their 50s. And if The Golden Girls was going to be cast today, it would have to be cast with people like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. And yeah, doesn't that totally—

Ellen

Wait, time out. I just need you to—are you telling me that when The Golden Girls first aired that…?

Lisa

They were all in their 50s? Betty White was 52. Absolutely, yeah! <laugh>

Ellen

Oh my gosh. That’s remarkable. <laugh>

Lisa

When I learned that it blew my mind.

Ellen

My mind is all over the floor right now. That is just unbelievable.

Lisa

Yeah! And so now though, when you think of women of that age, you don't think of them as white-haired women in caftans.

So just like, you know, people say, oh, 40 is the new 30 or—we are living longer. So, we have to reframe how we think about aging. Because when life expectancy ended at 65, then it made sense that somebody “old” was 52. So, when you think about that, you really have to reframe what you consider “old” or “aging.”

Ellen

“Golden.” Absolutely.

Lisa

Or “golden.” Exactly.

When we look at happiness levels—across cultures really, it doesn't matter what country you're looking at—happiness levels generally are very high with the young, and then they drop a little bit as people enter adulthood. And that makes sense when you think about the pressures of working, raising a family. It makes sense that happiness levels will drop off a little bit in adulthood. But what doesn't get often talked about is that they rise again as people age, and a lot of that has to do with older people themselves having a propensity to enhance positive feelings and have this positivity effect and downplaying negative aspects.

We spend so much of our life chasing happiness, and really, time might be the best way to truly pursue happiness. By keeping our physical selves healthy, but also our cognitive selves—we have to keep learning. Learning is the best way to stay vibrant and to promote cognitive health. And that cognitive health gives you the resources—taking care of your brain as well as your body—is what helps people age well.

Ellen

I'm really excited to talk with you about learning in particular, because I feel like learning is such a hallmark experience of youth. But learning is not something only for young people. And I'd love to talk with you a little bit about how learning at all phases in life and learning in older adulthood can really be a way to recapture a sense of what we think of traditionally as something that we do when we're younger.

Let's talk now about the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, which I am starting to suspect is probably one of the best kept secrets in Pittsburgh. So I'm—I just would love to hear about the institute, what it does, who it serves, your role, how long you've been working as a part of the institute, everything you can tell us about it. I'm all ears.

Lisa

Oh, well, it's my pleasure to talk about it. The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh has actually been there 19 years.

So, it is sad that it is the best kept secret, but I'm working hard to fight that. It is one of 125—we sometimes abbreviate it, OLLI, O-L-L-I for Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. That's a mouthful. It's one of 125 OLLIs across the country. They are all associated with universities, and they all serve people who are “50 and better” is what we like to say, by creating a dedicated intellectual learning environment for them.

And at the University of Pittsburgh, we achieve that mission in several different ways. Mostly, what we do is offer our own courses. They are shorter, 5-week or 10-week classes, and they are just for our members. So, there's no credits. There's no grades. Usually there's no homework. Sometimes you might have to do some reading or watching a video, but usually no homework.

Our members take these classes because they love to learn, and they just want to engage in curiosity like you said before. Our courses span almost every subject you can imagine. So, from ancient history, modern U.S. history, wartime history, literature, art, art history, yoga, politics, economics, current events. We even, this summer, had a class on Taylor Swift because people wanted to learn what are their grandchildren, you know, so excited about? Who is Taylor Swift? How do we understand her impact on culture? So, there's a wide range of subjects in which people can engage.

There's also different ways that people can engage, whether they want to come on campus and sit in a classroom with their peers and learn in person, or if they prefer to learn online. A lot of people either just like the convenience of being able to open up their computer and learn in their kitchen or their living room. Some people have mobility issues, or health issues that might prevent them from coming to campus. So, we do offer online learning as well.

And these classes are offered all throughout the year. In the spring term, the summer term, the fall term. The bulk of our program are these class offerings. But we also have lectures—one-time lectures—that explore, maybe for a longer period of time, a certain topic.

We also give people opportunities to gather together in special interest groups. So if there's people who are taking the Spanish class and they want to practice their Spanish conversation, they can meet and have Spanish conversation. We have a group of knitters that comes to our office every Thursday morning. And now they've started talking about books, too. So, it's knitting and books that they sit and talk about.

We also try to explore the richness of both the University of Pittsburgh campus and all of the wonderful activities that are happening there the lectures, the films, the talks, the opportunities that, that being part of a vibrant urban campus allows us, but also in the Pittsburgh region in general. So, we'll take a trip to the Pittsburgh Botanic Garden, or to Carrie Furnace, or to the Warhol Museum, you know, and just take advantage of the activities that we have here in Pittsburgh.

We've also started instituting international travel because a lot of our members enjoy traveling, and they want to do it with their peers, and they want to do it in an educational way, in a way that allows them to learn about the art of a region or the architecture of a place or the history. So, we try to cultivate international travel experiences that allow people who are like minded to be able to experience that kind of unique educational opportunity together.

Ellen

Where do the faculty come from who teach at the institute?

Lisa

That is a great question. About 20 to 25 percent—it changes every term—come from the University of Pittsburgh, either current faculty or a lot of emeritus faculty, faculty who have retired from their full-time undergraduate- or graduate-level teaching, but they love to teach for us.

Actually, our instructors can come from any academic institution—again, either current or retired. And because we offer online programing, they don't have to be just in Allegheny County or the Pittsburgh region. They can be from all across the nation. And we do have instructors from all across the nation.

They can also be local experts, people who are just very well-versed and educated about a certain field or a certain practice. A local yoga teacher, for example, or somebody who works at the Pittsburgh Opera and wants to teach our members about opera. So sometimes local experts are also our instructors. And, you know, getting back to when we talk about aging, some of the very best teachers are in their 60s because they have so much experience with their topics, with the ways to engage people and help facilitate learning. So, it's a great experience for our instructors as well as our members.

Ellen

Oh, I bet. That is just fantastic. Something that I think about a lot is the embodied wisdom of people who are at older ages. We're so lucky to have the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute here in Pittsburgh. And how do people access the catalog of courses or how do they enroll in the program? Is there tuition?

Lisa

Yes. So, we are a membership-based program so people can join us and become a member either for one term (which again is summer, fall, spring), or annually for the entire year.

And we are an all-inclusive program. So, once you join and become a member, you have access to as many courses as you'd like to take. Which, when I first started—I've been director for about a year and a half and I thought, oh, you know, people probably take two classes or three classes. No, most of our members take 5 classes, 7 classes, 10 classes every term. So, it is a membership-based program, but we never want finances to be a barrier to people accessing a resource like OLLI at Pitt. So we offer scholarships, financial assistance if people do need it. We don't want that to be a barrier.

Our website has all of the information about membership. We have open houses every term, so checking our website will give you the most up-to-date information on when the upcoming open house will be for that term's membership.

Ellen

And we will be sure to put the website in the show notes if people want to go there and take a look at it. So, you just mentioned that you've been in the director role for a little bit more than a year. I'd love to hear a little bit about how you found your way to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and sort of what your day-to-day job as director looks like, the kinds of things you're working on?

Lisa

Absolutely. I've always been a lifelong learner. I've always been associated with education in some way, whether it was teaching middle school, high school, undergraduate students, and adult students. It's been a passion of mine, and I feel like I myself am a lifelong learner. I always get excited about learning something new.

And certainly being director of OLLI at Pitt gives me a lot of opportunities to learn new things, new communities that we can outreach to make sure that people have access to our programing, working with both our internal partners and external partners to make sure that we are meeting the needs of older adults, both locally in Allegheny County, where about 92 percent of our members come from. But we also have members in over 21 different states. So we need to make sure that we are meeting the needs of different kinds of learners: online learners, in-person learners, far away learners, local learners. We just want to make sure that we have every advantage to be able to offer to people who we serve.

Ellen

Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, or other thoughts that you'd like to share about aging in general? And if, in the context of that, you care to comment on anything related to what you're most excited or hopeful about, that would be great.

Lisa

One of the things I'm excited about is changing how people view aging. Our program, of course, is tailored towards the “50 and better” crowd, but we are on the University of Pittsburgh campus, surrounded by 18-, 19-, 20-year-old undergraduates and graduate students. And there's so many opportunities for intergenerational learning.

I forgot to mention that one of the benefits of the OLLI at Pitt program that our members have is the ability to audit university classes. So, they can sit in on a 16-week course, either because it's not a topic that we may offer in our shorter format, or the member just wants, you know, to have that more in-depth 16-week exploration of a topic. And they like being with undergraduates. They like having that environment of being in a college classroom. I think that offers both the undergraduate younger person and our OLLI member so many advantages. That ability to learn from each other, for intergenerational learning. There's so many things that I've learned at my age that I wish, I'm like, why didn't someone tell me about that? Why didn't we, you know, talk more about these topics? A lot of the topics that you discuss on this podcast. And I think there's a lot of opportunity for us to just to increase that conversation, to make sure that we are not staying in silos of generations.

We are the most age-diverse that we've ever been in that there's equal number of young people, middle-aged people, older people. But we're also the most siloed in those ages. And I think that just gives us an opportunity to say, “Hey, what can we learn from each other?” Not just the older teaching the younger, but what can the younger teach the older as well?

Ellen

I think that's so important.

Lisa, it has been such a delight to talk with you today. I am so excited to know more about the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. I'm very grateful that the “Good Health, Better World” podcast can be one small part of, I know, lots of work you're up to to raise awareness about its existence and availability, and thank you so much for what you're doing to support lifelong learners. It's just fantastic. I really loved talking with you. Thank you.

Lisa

Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure to talk about a program I love so much.

Ellen

We hope you enjoyed this episode of “Good Health, Better World.” Be sure to tune in next time and visit upmchealthplan.com/goodhealth for resources and show notes.

This podcast is for informational and educational purposes. It is not medical care or advice. Individuals in need of medical care should consult their care provider. Views and opinions expressed by the host and guests are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of UPMC Health Plan and its employees.

Guest speakers:

Lisa Sharfstein

Director, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh

Lisa Sharfstein joined the University of Pittsburgh's Office of Engagement and Community Affairs as the Director of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in 2023. As director, Lisa is responsible for overall operations, programming, and community outreach for the Institute, which provides courses, events, and activities to a membership audience of those age 50 and better. She is passionate about maintaining a dedicated learning environment that meets members’ intellectual needs while nurturing social connection and community. Lisa has worked in the field of education with learners of all ages in a variety of contexts. From adult literacy to middle school language arts to college-level writing, her career has encompassed the spectrum of learning ages and stages. Lisa is currently interested in the benefits of intergenerational learning and the tenets of healthy aging. She was previously a board member for the College Reading and Learning Association and worked at Carlow University for 10 years in both staff and adjunct faculty roles. Lisa received her master’s degree in education from Syracuse University and a BA from Ithaca College.