The
Art of Aging: A Doctor's Prescription for Well-Being
by Sherwin B. Nuland
The word “wellness” has come to be just another word for health, referring to health education and health activities. Coined in 1961 by a physician, Dr. Halbert L. Dunn, the term does, indeed, refer to a wide range of health pursuits, but with a single, unifying idea and a single goal. The idea is the interrelatedness of the whole human being—body, mind, and spirit—and the goal is a state of well-being that goes beyond the mere absence of illness, with emphasis on the choices we make for ourselves in everyday life as means of attaining that goal.
The book The Art of Aging, by Sherwin B. Nuland, doesn’t use the word “wellness,” but it pertains to the same kinds of choices and the same interaction of body, mind, and spirit. Most uniquely, its focus is on the crucial difference that our choices can make on the quality of our later lives, and it offers a wealth of information to guide us in these choices.
The title sounds as though the book may be only for old people, but it isn’t. It offers a view of life which, though of great interest to oldsters like me, will be all the more useful the earlier in life one is exposed to the information and perspective it offers. I spoke so highly of the book to my own children, who are in their middle years, that one of them has already gotten it, and I have ordered one for each of the other two and one for my eldest grandson, age 25, who has taken some interest in wellness and I think may be ready for the view of life that the book offers.
I learned of the book, which is new this year, from a television interview of the author by Charlie Rose. Vocationally, Nuland is a clinical professor of surgery at Yale University. Beyond that, he is an intellectual of very broad scope and broad sympathies, and an ardent explorer for lives that exemplify, to an exceptional degree, a mastery of the art of aging.
I plan to devote my next several "Focus on Wellness" columns in The Word newsletter to information and ideas from this book.
Locally, Hastings had two copies of the book, of which I bought one, and I counted five on the shelf at Books-a-Million. Also, a copy is available in our church library, or you can order a by contacting Rev. Troy Sims or ordering it here: