By Natasha Josefowitz, Ph.D.
LA JOLLA, California — So, what will you be when you grow up? Most of my grandchildren have answered: “I don’t know!” No one has asked me that question in recent memory. I know I want to play the guitar and sing in my next life—as in this one I’m totally untalented for music.
However, we can all still be what we might have been—given the right opportunities, time, money, friends…. Many of us reach a time in our lives when we reassess how we spend our time, rethink the meaning of our lives, reevaluate our relationships, and wonder how we are going to spend the years that remain, whether we are young, in mid-life, or old.
Whenever we go through the process of reexamining where we have been, are today, and will be tomorrow, we can make some changes, let go of some behaviors that are no longer relevant, and institute new ways of managing our lives. In other words, we will have to become creative in order to get out of our routines. Creativity is inventing something new. It can be a new attitude, a new way of behaving, of expressing ourselves, of relating to others. As we age, we have new opportunities for personal growth, new understandings and new tolerances for our own and other people’s foibles and weaknesses.
Being creative means being open to the possibility of new ventures. This can be anything from starting to write in a journal, taking a painting class, attending lectures, or learning a musical instrument to committing ourselves to an exercise program, a daily walk, joining a book club, or just reading more.
What makes us able to be creative is self-motivation, curiosity, attraction to the unknown, tolerance for risk, willingness to step outside the lines. The obstacles are laziness, fear, sticking to the familiar, lack of tolerance for ambiguity.
It is never too late to unlock those barriers to self-expression. Even loss and adversity can sometimes propel us into new directions. Anything that we do differently is new and therefore creative. Trying a new recipe qualifies, as does approaching a problem at work from a new perspective.
Whenever we do anything challenging, our brains sprout new dendrites. The more dendrites, the better our brain cells communicate with each other, and our thinking and our memory improve.
Don’t think of creativity as something only very talented people do. It is up to each one of us to become creative in our daily lives. Take a walk in a new part of town, try to understand music you don’t ordinarily enjoy, read a part of the paper you normally skip over, get involved in a volunteer activity, or take on more responsibility in your organization. This will all grow dendrites in your brain. Whatever it is, examine your life by noting what you do with all the hours of your day, how productive these are, and how satisfying? Are you wasting time; to what better use can you put it? Think outside the box–enlist the help of a friend to strategize new steps to enhance your life and that of others around you, be they your family, friends, community, or even your country and the world at large.
Doing something new—getting out of our comfort zone—will make us older folks feel like we’re slowing down time, countering the feeling that time is moving ever faster as we age.
The possibilities are endless, the opportunities are there, waiting to be discovered and acted upon. So get up from your favorite chair, think of one different thing to do today, do it, then pat yourself on the back, smile, and think of another. Your brain will have grown a new dendrite. What a deal!
*
(c) Natasha Josefowitz, whose articles also appear in the La Jolla Village News. Your comment may be posted in the space provided below or sent to natasha.josefowitz@sdjewishworld.com