10 SEPTEMBER 2019 THE ATLANTICRESPONSES & REVERBERATIONSArthur C. Brooks’s insightful
piece really hit home for me. I
was a primary-care physician
for 33 years before closing
my office to concentrate on
elder and end-of-life care five
years ago, when I turned 65. I
had started feeling my fluid
intelligence ebb, even as I was
treating an ever more demand-
ing caseload in a setting of
corporatized health care.
My solution was to turn
my practice over to a capable
younger physician and embrace
long-term-care geriatrics,
where I have time to indulge my
patients and lead from my heart.
I work with an excellent
hospice team and facility staff.
Not a week goes by when I don’t
hold the hand of a dying person
or sign a death certificate. My
goal is to bring my patients
the comfort and peace thatsupposed to have expressed
only one regret toward the end
of his life: “I did not drink more
champagne.” This seems a
worthy goal for all economists,
indeed for high achievers in all
careers, and much more enjoy-
able than Sannyasa.
Avinash Dixit
PRINCETON, N.J.I am an 85-year-old male who
retired at “the top of my game”
at age 62. The retirement
decision was based on family
considerations: Our married
daughter, a soon-to-be mother,
lived in Portland, Oregon, and
asked that my wife and I move
to her town. The first six months
of settling into our new home
kept me occupied, so I did not
feel an identity crisis. But soon
I began to wonder whether we
had retired too soon, and to feel
a bit lost and depressed.
My wife suggested that I
return to playing the clarinet.
It did not take me long to
realize that having the time to
rehone my playing skills was a
gift. I got engaged in Port-
land’s music community, and
eventually became principal
clarinetist in two orchestras.
My greatest compliments come
from other, often younger
musicians who attend my recit-
als and consistently tell me that
I continue to improve.
Jules Elias
PORTLAND, ORE.Arthur Brooks omits an
important point about profes-
sional decline after age 50. For
skill-based professions, waning
creativity is outweighed by
increasing experience and
judgment. Chesley Sullen-
berger was 58 when he landed
a jet on the Hudson River. For
heart surgeons like me, the 50s
are generally peak years.
Moreover, it is baffling
that Brooks picked Darwin
as an example of someone
who “stagnated” after age- Darwin published On the
allow heartfelt communication
and that is only possible with
reconciliation. Like the Buddha
Mr. Brooks encountered, I have
contemplated death and no
longer find it threatening.
John Jefferys Bandola, M.D.
KINGSTON, R.I.The article by Arthur Brooks is
magnificent. As an 85-year-old
professional, I have already
experienced the world of angst
he is now entering. Take his
advice, please. He is espe-
cially right about the desire
to explore spirituality, which
professionals tend to neglect in
their early years.
W. R. Klemm
BRYAN, TEXASI seem to have intuited and
followed most of Arthur
Brooks’s precepts. During myquite successful academic
career, I gradually shifted from
research to teaching, and from
graduate to under graduate
teaching. I retired at 66. Ten
years later, I keep my hand in
research, but purely for my
own intellectual pleasure, and
to keep my brain active and
healthy. I don’t even have an
office at the university; I work
at home in my pajamas.
The only item of Brooks’s
advice I disagree with is
Sannyasa, the “focus on more
transcendentally important
things.” The material world is
wonderful, and I now get to
enjoy it in ways I never could
before. I will not “leave my
office horizontally,” but I may
be taken horizontally off a
cruise ship.
A demigod of my voca-
tion, John Maynard Keynes, is- THE CONVERSATION
Your Professional Decline
Is Coming (Much) Sooner
Than You Think
In July, Arthur C. Brooks wrote about how to make the most of it.