Friendships
Suzanne Braun Levine
First editor of ‘Ms.’ magazine, Writer on ‘Second Adulthood’; Author of ‘How We Love Now,’ ’50 Is the New Fifty,’ and ‘Inventing the Rest of Our Lives’
The surest route to decline as we age is isolation. Older people fade away psychologically, physically, and socially, if they don’t have the emotional or intellectual stimulation we take for granted earlier in our lives. So the post 50 version of “an apple a day” is “nurture your friendships.”
During our first adulthood, frantically balancing the multiple demands on our lives was (over)stimulation enough. Many of us neglected important friendships other than those that develop out of common interests (parents of kids your kids’ ages) or shared space (workplace colleagues). Now that we are starting to think about the rest of our lives, though, the notion of close friends comes to mind. When we ask ourselves what matters going…
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