Elder Power: The Secrets Elders Keep

Flipping the Script on Aging

By LD Thompson

“If we can embody the wisdom we’ve earned, we can help rewrite the story of what it means to grow old.”'

There’s a quiet crisis unfolding among those entering their elder years—not of body, but of belief. Too many of us are in danger of absorbing society’s bias against aging. There is real harm in believing the story that getting older means losing relevance, purpose, and vitality.

It’s time to flip that script. Awakened aging offers profound advantages that the young can’t yet fathom. Wisdom, patience, clarity, compassion—these are not the side effects of age. They are its powers.

The Bias We Inherit

Internalized ageism is real. Just as there is internalized bias among racial or LGBTQ groups, elders often absorb the culture’s negative messages about aging and turn them inward.

Wikipedia defines internalized oppression as “the resignation by members of an oppressed group to the methods of an oppressing group and their incorporation of its message against their own best interest.” In short, believing the message that diminishes us.

But the research tells another story. Conscientiousness peaks around age 65. Emotional stability peaks around 75. Moral reasoning deepens well into older adulthood. Even our ability to resist cognitive biases—those quick, irrational mental shortcuts—continues improving into our 70s and 80s.(Source: The Conversation)

Yes, We Lose Some Things—But We Gain More

No, elders don’t generally sprint faster or remember endless strings of data as they once did. Athletes peak in their 20s and 30s; chess players around 35. Physical brilliance belongs to youth.

But depth—the ability to integrate, to discern, to understand life’s meaning—belongs to age. Let’s look at some of the hidden advantages we earn simply by staying alive and awake.

1. We Have Been Young

We’ve already lived that season. We know the storms of loss and the intoxication of success. We know desire, disappointment, and the art of reinvention. Younger people can’t yet imagine the long view—the way time itself becomes a teacher.

2. We Know How to “Do Easy”

As William Burroughs wrote in his essay Proclamation: Do Easy, there comes a point when we stop “efforting” life and start moving through it with grace. Our gestures, projects, and thoughts find rhythm. What once felt like struggle becomes ease. That is mastery, not surrender.

3. We Understand Time

We know our heartbeats are finite. That knowledge humbles us, softens us, and fills us with compassion. It gives urgency to forgiveness and presence to every small joy.

4. Compassion Comes Easier

It’s easier now to forgive ourselves—and in that act, to see the Universe as forgiving too. This is not a philosophical point; it’s a lived truth. Age widens the aperture of empathy.

5. Desire Softens

This may be one of the secrets elders rarely discuss. Desire—at least the kind that enslaves—diminishes. Hormones quiet, yes, but so does the restless chase. We learn, finally, that fulfillment doesn’t come from what we acquire, but from who we’ve become.

6. Joy Becomes a Choice

When the need for approval falls away, joy becomes accessible at will. Even amid difficulty, the awakened elder knows that joy is always on the menu—and often chooses it over fear, bitterness, or regret.

The Real Secret of Elder Power

The power of aging lies in clarity, compassion, and choice. It’s the grace of knowing what truly matters—and what never did.

If we refuse to internalize the culture’s bias against age, and instead embody the depth and steadiness that come only with time, we can change the narrative.

Because elderhood isn’t the end of the story—it’s the great reveal.