Cell regeneration in the New Year

This column is from December 2011. It's fairly hopeful for a holiday I dislike. — CS

As one year closes and the next begins, conversation turns to resolutions and the changes necessary to make us feel shiny and new in 2012.

Some people say nature does this for us already. A widely held belief is that our cells replace themselves every seven years, meaning that regardless of our chronological age, at any given time our bodies are about as old as we were when we first learned how to ride a bike and that fart jokes were the apex of humor.

The truth is more complex — about cell rebirth, that is, not flatulence, which really is the wise old man at the summit of the comedy mountain. It turns out that many of our cells do slough off and regenerate, but some — heart and bone and brain — have only a limited capability in this regard, if at all.

Of the three, the brain is the most important when it comes to feeling new. I know plenty of people housed in vital, healthy bodies who are nevertheless imprisoned inside inflexible brains. It’s like having a brand new sports car but driving it from the trunk.

The secret to staying young is far less about keeping a fit body (but that’s important, too) than maintaining a youthful brain. I don’t mean that you must cram your head full of puzzles and trivia to stave off dementia, although those aren’t necessarily bad pursuits. Instead, you should focus on staying flexible in temperament and entertaining ambiguity.

Stop being so certain all the time. Consider the other side. If you’re a Tea Partier, seek to understand the Occupy movement, or vice versa. If you hate sappy, sentimental movies, grab yourself a box of tissues and pop in “The Notebook.” If you’re a longhair fan of Beethoven, give punk rock or screamo a go. If the worker at the cubicle down the way puzzles or annoys you, invite him to lunch.

Don’t enter into these pursuits with nose in the air and teeth gritted, as if bathing in polluted waters. Go with a willing heart — and brain.

Playwright John Patrick Shanley says doubt is essential to advancement. “When a man feels unsteady,” he writes, “when hard-won knowledge evaporates before his eyes, he’s on the verge of growth.”

Sometimes, our metaphors get us all loused up. We visualize the year that is passing as an old man, and the new one as an innocent babe. This is all wrong. In reality, the New Year is the rickety ancient, his mind already packed with preconceived notions and grudges that carry over from the year before.

Our goal should be to grow progressively younger in spirit as the year goes on — to be more childlike (in the best meaning of the word) in December than we were in January. At what point in life are we happier than when we are babies — laughing with abandon when something is funny, crying just as vociferously when something is not, forgetting one day’s troubles by the time the next day begins? It’s only with age that we learn to repress, hold grudges and set ourselves on destructive paths.

Maybe the most depressing part of New Year’s — even worse than that old Scottish drinking song and the spectacle of so many people staying up too late and imbibing prodigious amounts of alcohol — is the realization that many people see change as something tied to the calendar.

Next year I’ll lose weight, go back to school, find a way out of debt, clean out the trunk of my car. Next semester I’ll stop smoking and start studying. Come summer, I’ll finally read “War and Peace.” But these promises are self-deluding at best, destructive at worst.

I don’t know the percentage of people who keep New Year’s resolutions, but I know it’s pretty dismal. While New Year’s can be a fresh start, so can April 10 or Dec. 29. So can right now.

When anybody asks me my New Year’s resolution, my reply is always the same: to be less judgemental and more tolerant. Truthfully, however, that’s my resolution every day. People who know me well may notice I’ve made progress in this regard. I’m less cynical in my 40s than I was in my 20s, which has nothing to do with age and everything to do with effort. The fact that I’m still three times as cynical as most other people tells me I have a long way to go.

My mission — should I choose to accept it — is to stay mentally young, to entertain all sides of an issue and accept a multiplicity of opinions.
It’s my own version of cell regeneration, and I’ll be practicing it again this year. Join me, won’t you?


chris.schillig@yahoo.com @cschillig on Twitter