To the Nines

Ever since humans learned to count – when that might have been is anybody’s guess – they have been numerologists, assigning special importance to some numbers beyond their absolute values. Sometimes this was because of celestial correspondences – such as 12 because of 12 full lunar cycles in a year – and sometimes because of internal characteristics. The Pythagoreans regarded 10, for instance, as the most perfect number (being 1 + 2 + 3 + 4) and, according to their beliefs, therefore of mystical significance. Thanks to the dominance of the Base 10 number system, modern folk also tend to give 10 and its multiples quasi-mystical significance. Consider the significance we attach to 10^th anniversaries. So too birthdays: 20^th, 30^th, 40^th etc. birthdays all are considered landmarks in our lifetimes. Yet the birthdays prior – which is to say those ending in 9 – have greater impact. This comes to mind since just last week I reached an age ending in 9.

Donald as a Pythagorean in "Donald in
Mathmagic Land (1961)"

We commonly define our stage of life by decade: twenty-something or fifty-something or whatever. We just as legitimately could divide a lifetime by 7s or some other number, but we keep the math simple and divide it by 10s. We often set our goals accordingly, as in “I want to be/achieve/have such-and-such by the time I’m 30.” Hence 29 rings alarm bells. Time is running out. The goals change with each new looming decade, but the sense of urgency when it is 12 months away is always the same. We push ourselves into (sometimes ill-considered) action while there is time. First time Marathon runners are more likely to be an age ending in 9 than other ages. First time sign-ups on the Ashley Madison adultery website are overrepresented in the 29, 39, and 49 ages. According to the World Values Survey (42,000 respondents), people are most likely to question the meaning of their lives in a 9 year. Some don’t like their conclusions because suicides spike in years ending in 9: not a by lot (2.5%) but enough to be statistically significant.
 
We may motivate ourselves to change our behaviors in the 9 years, but do we change who we are at bottom? The consensus among psychologists is that radical personality transformations are rare at any age – and may indicate brain damage when they occur. Even apparent transformations, as among religious converts, affect surface behaviors more than underlying traits. The Big Five personality traits are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (acronym OCEAN). Each of these is a spectrum, and where a person scores on them is a remarkably accurate predictor of how he or she deals with life. High conscientiousness, for example, is the single biggest predictor of material success: more so than intelligence, which is not a personality trait. (IQ is like horsepower under the hood: more of it means your car can do more, but it indicates nothing about what kind of driver you are.) The terms are largely self-explanatory except perhaps openness. (It does NOT mean an open person is someone who can be convinced to agree with us politically.) It has to do with imagination and curiosity about the world, evinced either through adventurousness, bookishness, or both. A person’s scores scarcely ever change noticeably in a 9 year or in any other one year, but we do evolve slowly over longer time periods.
 
The good news is that those long term gradual personality changes are usually for the better. Writes Professor of Psychology Christopher Solo, “Many studies, including some of my own, show that most adults become more agreeable, conscientious and emotionally resilient [less neurotic] as they age.” The “more agreeable” trend seems to argue against the Grumpy Old Man stereotype, but since such characters do exist I suppose we must conclude that in their youths they were flaming jackasses. They mellowed out to merely grumpy. Happiness tends to increase with age too. Ironically, this is partly because of a lowering of expectations. Our options really do diminish with each passing decade and we make peace with that. Also, we tend to care less about the opinions of others. I remember an old George Burns line: “When I was young I was taught to respect my elders. I’ve finally reached the point when I don’t have to respect anybody.”
 
Getting back to my own 9er year, when I was 20 (or 40 for that matter) I didn’t consider the difference between 69 and 70 to be worth mentioning. Both seemed superannuated to me. But now that I’m here the difference seems significant. Making a major personality change in the remaining year before the big seven-zero is apparently off the table. I’m long past angst over existential “meaning of life” issues. Quite aside from being well outside the preferred age demographic, I’m not married so don’t really qualify for Ashley Madison. Sign up for a marathon? I don’t think “No” is a strong enough answer. I’m satisfied with life as it is, generally speaking. Still, there must be some changes to my lifestyle that I should cram into the months before that 9 flips to 0. I just need to sit down and make a list – though it’s possible I’ll misplace it.
 
 

The Boswell Sisters - There`ll be some changes made (1932)