Why Life Can Get Harder and Happier After 50 | Jonathan Rauch

Jonathan Rauch (0:00)

The whole thing was a surprise. Everything I thought I knew about midlife was wrong, but the biggest surprise was discovering that we have this preconception that aging is a process of decline, despair and death. And that you're going to peak in midlife or your 50s, or maybe your 60s if you're lucky, and then you're gonna retire, go out to pasture, get Alzheimer's, become irrelevant, no longer be entrepreneurial or creative, or for that matter, happy.

SPEAKER_2 (0:30)

Welcome to The Midlife Chrysalis Podcast with Chip Conley, where we explore how midlife isn't a crisis, but a chrysalis, a time of profound transformation that can lead to the most meaningful chapter of your life.

Chip Conley (0:46)

Welcome to The Midlife Chrysalis. This is Chip Conley. And if you're an intellectual, you're going to enjoy this one. If you're not an intellectual, you still might enjoy this one because it's very wedded to the times we live in. Jonathan Rauch is an American author, journalist, bit of a public intellectual.

He's a senior fellow at Brookings Institute, institution contributing writer at The Atlantic. So he's got the credibility of being a smart dude. But we also talk about wisdom. And he's an author. He's written nine books. But we, and we talk about four of them. But most importantly, he is the one that I went to in, you know, when I started getting really interested in midlife. I saw an article he had written in 2014 in The Atlantic. And then as I was getting more and more interested in midlife, ultimately leading to writing a book about it, Wisdom at Work, The Making of a Modern Elder, and creating the Modern Elder Academy, he was my guide. So it's beautiful that we have him here.

His book, The U-curve of Happiness is still absolutely worth, or it's actually called The Happiness Curve, is still worth reading. And I think you'll enjoy this conversation. At the end, I'll have my three favorite lessons from the episode. Jonathan Rauch, welcome to The Midlife Chrysalis.

Jonathan Rauch (1:59)

I'm happy to be here, old friend.

Chip Conley (2:01)

Well, eight years ago, we became acquainted with each other. I had read your Atlantic article about the midlife crisis. I note to self, that was 2014, I believe, and I had been at Airbnb as the mentor to the founders for about a year at that point. I was getting increasingly intrigued by the topic of midlife, having had a really challenging late 40s. But at that point, I was pretty happy. Then a few months later or a few years later, I decided to create the midlife wisdom school called the Modern Elder Academy. That year was exactly the same year that your book, The Happiness Curve came out. We'll talk a little bit about that. But that was also when I got diagnosed with, at that point, just stage 1 prostate cancer.

Even though we were just getting to know each other, we both happened to be gay. You were very thoughtful and as we reconnected now, the first thing you asked me was, how's my health? Yeah, I'm at stage 3, and it metastasized. So I'm just glad to be here with you.

You're a bright, guiding light that helps us to see things often that we as a society don't see.

Jonathan Rauch (3:18)

Well, you're kind of say all that. You've been an inspiration to me, watching, of course, the bravery you've handled your personal health situation.

But your ability to reinvent yourself, to find a passion, to give to others, your entrepreneurship. And I think of you as kind of the practice to which I've tried to be the theory. So getting to know you these past, I don't know, almost 10 years has been a real blessing.

Chip Conley (3:47)

Thank you. Well, you are, you're an amazing writer.

And as I was saying to you before we started recording, it's interesting. Your books often point something out that isn't obvious. You're an astute observer. And in your book that came out in 2015, the book was called Political Realism. And it was a short e-book, but it was talking about how the weakening of political parties has damaged governance, which is not exactly how a lot of people think about the weakening of political parties. And then three years later, as I said, The Happiness Curve, Why Life Gets Better, After 50 came out. And it helped probably more than just about any book. In fact, I think more than any book. It really helped to elevate this idea, this weird juxtaposition of like, hey, there's this low point in life satisfaction.

Again, today it's a little different because young adults are even less happy, but between 45 and 50 ish. And then we actually tend to get happier after 50 So it was again, a surprise. And then The Constitution of Knowledge, a defense of truth, which, you know, given the political times we're living in and the disinformation and trolling and polarization, it really, that was, to me, at least my read of that book was, it was less about telling us something we didn't know, but actually amplifying something we did know and saying how important it is. But then more recently, as someone who's an atheist, you wrote a book called Cross Purposes, Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy. And the fact that in some ways, what is the thing with Christianity's, not its demise, but actually reduced importance in society, although that is now plateaued a little bit.