2026 June 16 Fitting in as we age

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me today to talk about fitting in. Let's get started.

If you like what you hear today, please leave a like, subscribe, tell your friends, and send me a message. This week, we're going to be talking about how our experience — both in life and work — can sometimes make it a challenge to fit in with mixed-age groups.

We've talked before about the five pillars of our lives as we age: identity, mind (the neuroscience and things related to our brain), body, curiosity, and contribution. Tonight, fitting in cuts across identity, curiosity, and contribution.

Since I'm just starting to publish on Substack — you can find me there soon under Jim Cranston — I decided I should also pay a little more attention to other authors. As a courtesy, I've been reading some other posts, and I came across one by Judy Grouppenhoff of Human Transitioning. The particular post was entitled What Happens When the Room Gets Bigger? It was actually a follow-up to an earlier post of hers called If You Think in Systems and See Patterns Others Don't See, This Is Your Moment. She was talking about neurodiversity, but really, more broadly, about how to live in a world when you think differently than other people.

And some of us do think very differently than other people.

The gist of her writing was: how do you handle thinking differently? What if you see the world in a more interconnected way — not at all linearly, the way many people and most societies do? The response to that first post was so large that she changed her publishing schedule to write the follow-up article. And as is often the case, the comments were just as important as the article itself. A good piece of writing elicits meaningful comments and often extends the discussion in ways the original author hadn't even anticipated — applying concepts to unexpected situations.

Two comments really stood out to me.

The first, by Tyler Holland, said: "What resonated with me most was the idea that many people learn to compress themselves in order to belong — not necessarily because their thoughts are better or more complex, but because belonging often requires translation. The challenge seems to be finding environments where less of that translation is necessary and where curiosity is valued more than conformity."

The second, by Year in Color, said: "I wouldn't say I flattened my thinking so much as I compartmentalized myself and curated which parts I shared in which context. With the writing I'm doing now, I'm attempting to share more of the whole — the connections, the attunement that provide insight to people from facets they couldn't imagine."

When I read those two comments, I thought: that applies to us older adults as well. Very often, what may seem off the wall or out of context when we say something is actually the result of pulling from years — maybe even decades — of experience. We already know the unexpected but likely outcome of a situation because we've lived something very similar before.

One of my uncles was known for his total non sequiturs — comments that just seemed to come out of nowhere and left most people scratching their heads. It wasn't until we were much older, and actually well after he had passed away, that my cousin and I started revisiting some of the things we remembered him saying. We realized that if we just filled in the middle — the things he had experienced, like events from World War II, or working at IBM where everyone in the office had to stand up and sing a company song (a true story, by the way — they literally sang songs praising Mr. Watson, the founder) — suddenly, to Uncle Paul, his comments were as obvious as tomorrow's dawn. It was we who didn't understand what was going on, not Uncle Paul.

Which brings us back to those comments. As we age, we might start to feel that we have to filter ourselves — to translate what we say into more understandable terms, to compartmentalize ourselves to match the context and experience of those around us.

When I thought about it, I realized that I do exactly that. Except with a very limited group of friends, there are topics I just never talk about, and some of it is age-related. I can believe there might be a nuclear war — I practiced duck-and-cover drills in grade school and joked about it all the way through high school. People say they can't imagine countries invading each other. I can. The African continent pretty much restructured itself, along with parts of Europe, when I was in high school and a young adult. It wasn't until the Vietnam War years were behind me that I fully understood the impact World War II had on my older brothers. To me, as a child, it was just some historical thing — just as many of the things so large and present in our minds are historical things to Gen Xers, and certainly to Millennials. That's not the fault of anyone. But it is part of the reason older adults start to feel more isolated, especially now when most people have this binary view of politics that can cut your likely peer group in half.

But the first step in solving any problem is identifying it. Understanding why we are misunderstood is actually pretty clear, and it's also fairly straightforward to change.

When we're with mixed-age groups — or people who, for whatever reason, didn't share our experiences, like someone from a different country — we have to remember that everyone is working from a different context. This seems simple, but we forget how deeply our own history controls our perspective.

I was at a county fair a few years ago, standing in a food line chatting with a guy from one of the Plains states. It's a fair with a big agricultural presence, so meeting someone from out of state wasn't unusual. I said, "Don't the mountains look really pretty from here?" — because the local mountain range starts just a few miles away, across the river, and you can see them clearly. He said, "Well, no — they make me feel kind of closed in. At home, I can see the weather coming from miles away and prepare for it." It was a real eye-opener for me that even something like terrain is totally relative based on your personal history. It gave us something interesting to chat about. We both learned some things — but it also taught me not to assume too much about shared values when talking to someone new.

Not in a bad sense, but people just about faint when I tell them how annoyed I got when gas prices passed 30 cents a gallon, or that you could go out for dinner, a movie, a meal afterward, and dessert — all on ten dollars. There are a thousand other things like that we forget about, things that make us sound a little crazy or out of touch. Because 50 years seems like forever when you're 20, but it seems like an instant when you're 70.

So should you talk to your audience — specifically to your audience? I'd say yes. That's just part of being a good communicator. The other side of that is: should you also seek out your own peers? Again, yes — because sometimes your brain just needs to relax and speak freely about whatever comes to mind. And even when a story might take a little more explaining if you're talking to someone outside your experience, it's still worthwhile to share. Just do it from a place of sharing, not one-upmanship.

When we were young, there were many concerning things for us too — and other people helped us understand how survivable they were. If you feel there's no point in trying to learn new things, I'd encourage you to stay curious — in everything, in every way. Think AI is the devil incarnate inside your computer? It's not. It's just another program, like any other tool. It can be good or bad, it can work and it can break. The more you know about it, the more capable you are of understanding its limitations. When you understand something, you realize that's all it is — something of interest, not something to panic about.

So, to come back to the original topic of fitting in: much of it is up to us. It isn't an age thing as much as it's an attitude thing. Remember that someone much younger than you has an entirely different worldview — because, quite frankly, our world has changed. Remember to include the context of your thoughts when you share them. Remember to always be open-minded and polite, and not dismissive of what someone else says because they come from a different background or a different worldview.

Some friends I used to work with from Honduras were amazed at how unfree we were here in the United States. In Honduras, if you want to add a room to your house, you just add it. Done. Maybe eventually you register with the town, but there were no permits, no building inspectors, no neighborhood reviews. Our lives are shaped by our experiences, and part of that is all the things we've seen throughout our lives. So enjoy sharing those things openly — but in a caring and helpful way. Not dismissive, not putting somebody else down.

And remember to stay curious about what's happening in the current world, so you aren't always living in the past and can be involved in the present as well. Fitting in isn't some age-based thing. It just takes some practice, some patience, understanding, and openness.

That's it for this evening. As I've mentioned for a few weeks now, homework has pretty much gone away from the podcast because we're developing some courses and challenges — hopefully something in a week or two.

As always, please remember: one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. You can visit UKR7.com for links to help the people of Ukraine, and WCK.org — that's the World Central Kitchen — which works in disaster areas throughout the world and does truly amazing things. There are lots of ways to help people. There are local charities, and even something as simple as a smile can change someone else's day in ways you can't even imagine.

Thank you for joining me. If you found something interesting or useful, please pass it along, subscribe, and hit that like button. Let me know in the comments what other topics you'd like to hear about. Have a great week — and remember to live the life that you dreamed of, because that's the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com.