The Course of Creativity in Our Lives

The last two years have been hard on me.?My younger brother, Kenny, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died a painful, painful death several months later.?We had been very close throughout our lives.?Some months after he died, my dear sister, Jackie, was also diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died within a few months.?Then, about a month ago, my long-time buddy, Carter, finally faded away after years of debilitating dementia.

During this time, I soldiered on, keeping my emotions more or less in check in an odd and probably misconceived effort to be brave for others.?But the result may have been that the very same ‘discipline’ also checked or dampened my mind.?I began to procrastinate, to lose sight of many practical things, to seemingly lose my capacity for sustained and intense attention, as though willing to trade attention for less pain.?

I see that now and need to return to myself. Throughout my life, when faced with a roadblock, I have climbed out or over by creating something new: a new idea, a new way to understand myself, a new organization, a new book or article; or a new building project, like the house in New Hampshire and our cheery kitchen in Newton.?At 80, these energizing, creative projects seemed unrealistic or even unattainable.?

Among other things, my attentional capacity seemed to have waned.?As it waned, I grew stagnant, which is dispiriting.?In place of creativity, I have tried to convince myself it is enough to enjoy each day, to live in the eternal moment, to find gratitude for what I have, which is plenty.?But these lovely attitudes haven’t done the trick, and truly never have.

Yearning for the life-giving nourishment of creative activity, I decided to take a side road.?I’d look into the research on aging and creativity, to see what the experts say about creativity across the life span.?To study myself, in effect, and see if there are avenues I have not yet tapped. Here is some of what I’m learning.

According to both scientific belief and cultural lore, creativity takes place primarily in the land of the young.?We think of Einstein presenting the Special Theory of Relativity at 26 and Steve Jobs beginning Apple Computers at 21.?We envision poets, like Keats and Shelly blooming and dying in their twenties.?Dylan Thomas wrote Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, his famous cri de coeur about aging, when he was in his early thirties. ?I am a little older than that.

The researcher, Dean Keith Simonton, tells us that creativity tends to heighten in the mid-twenties and peak during the late thirties and forties.?Then it begins a slow, often steady decline from that point on.??According to that narrative, I may be experiencing the last few yards along that road.??

What seems to happen, according to researchers is that we become adaptive.?We stop rebelling and experimenting and accept things more or less as they are, “making us more effective with people and society. We become prisoners of our own success.?Sticking with what works makes us both more successful and less creative.” (Simonton)

Lots of contemporary research tells us that our minds become less “plastic” and, as we try to hold onto what has made us successful, less exhilarated and more fearful when we encounter the new and unknown.?

But here’s a hopeful note: much of the research that draws these conclusions is based primarily on the quantity, not quality of the work.?It seems that for every Keats and Einstein, there are the late creative outbursts of Beethoven (his late string quartets) and Thomas Mann (The Merchant of Venice).?There are also numbers of late bloomers like Joseph Conrad, George Bernard Shaw, Raymond Carver, and Henri Matisse.?Charles Darwin didn’t bring together his thoughts on evolution until the age of 50. And many of our greatest poets produced their best work in old age.?Think of Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, and Wallace Stevens. They may have produced less volume in old age but they continued on their creative pathways, often producing their most profound and contemplative poetry.

That’s encouraging.?What’s my rush??What if I wrote just a little each day or week. What if I helped others build their organizations, instead of building one myself??Which I already do as I coach many young nonprofit leaders. And there’s no reason the quality has to drop off. ?My advice is undoubtedly different, since I’m different than I was at 50 or 60 or 70, but I can at least hope, that the difference is a good one.

I am surely not a creative master like those I noted above but, like them, the tone of my late work might be similar in its inclinations.?Beethoven’s strange and haunting late quartets, for example, diverge markedly from the immensely melodic work of his youth.?Yeats’ late poetry is less exuberant but profoundly and movingly meditative.?Monet’s paintings seem to bloom when finally released from conventional restrictions.?And the stunning simplicity of Georgia O’Keeffe’s late paintings are both meditations achieved over a lifetime, and explosions of the moment.?I identify with these kinds of shifts.

Here's another variation on the idea of linear and universal decline.?The output of creative people tends to vary according to discipline.?Lyrical poets and mathematicians, for instance, almost always peak early, then decline, often rapidly.?But philosophers, historians, and psychologists, having absorbed complex ideas and information over full lifetimes, often reach their peak late in life.?I’m surely no lyrical poet but maybe I fit—and maybe you fit—in the latter category.

For some, creativity flashes in a moment, then disappears.?For others, productivity lasts a lifetime and well into their seventies and eighties.?Some feel and accept the decline.?Phillip Roth, for example, sensed the end and, as he approached eighty, and simply stopped writing.

Here’s yet another description of creativity and the lifespan: Some researchers have developed the idea of “career age” to differentiate it from chronological age.?So, we see early and late bloomers hitting stride at vastly different life stages, ranging from late teens to late seventies or even eighties.???

“One striking implication of these results,” wrote Simonton, “is that it seems unlikely that creative declines are caused simply by aging brains. If that were the case, it would be hard to explain why the creative path differs by domain, lifetime output, or the time someone embarks on his or her career. After all, late bloomers reach creative peaks at ages when early bloomers are past their prime. So, the good news is that it is possible to stay creative throughout one's life span.”

In previous essays, I have sketched some of the ways that psychologists have accounted for the variety of creative styles along the life span.?I talked about Raymond Cattell’s notion of “fluid” intelligence of youth and its capacity to find new ways to see the world, compared with the “crystalized” intelligence of age that is comprehensive, not inventive, and brings together large factual and conceptual fields in unique ways.

I recounted Baltes’ model of “selection, optimization, and compensation,” the SOC model, and his brilliant description of Artur Rubenstein’s late application to piano virtuosity.?For instance, since Rubenstein couldn’t play as fast in old age, he could slow down a great deal before playing very fast, bravado passages of music, creating the illusion of his former speed.

So, what shall I conclude from this research??First, that creativity, in and of itself, is good for us.?Innumerable researchers have concluded that creative activities have a positive effect on both physical and mental health. Research suggests that creative expression?gives old people a sense of purpose, helps to sustain their coordination and concentration, and even improves their mental health.

Simon de Beauvior has something even more forceful and, to me, animating, to say about that: “There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning…”

So, I have a goal: Each day, I will try to lift myself from disengagement, from attentional drift, and devote myself again to the political and creative values that have always animated me—and expect, not just hope, that they straighten my muddled mind and lift me from grief and lethargy.?