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people either thrive or fail to. In his book about the study, Aging Well, Dr. Vaillant, talking about the men in the study (although women were also participants), says, “Unhappy childhoods become less important with time. When the lives of the men whose childhoods were most bleak … were contrasted with men whose childhoods were the most sunny … the influence on college adjustment was very important. By early midlife, childhood was still significantly important, but by old age the warmth of childhood was statistically unimportant. A warm childhood, like a rich father, tended to inoculate the men against future pain, but a bleak childhood—such as with a poverty-stricken father—did not condemn either the Harvard or the Inner City men to misery.”1

The Young Brain

One thing scientists know for sure: at birth, babies’ brains have around twenty-five hundred synapses, or points of connection between the neurons that receive and send signals. These continue to multiply during the very early years, and until recently, it was believed that this increase in synapses happened only once—in childhood. Not true! Brain scientists now know that there is a second surge right before adolescence that lasts into the late twenties.

Think about it: Whether you are a boy or a girl, you have all these high-octane hormones flooding through you, but the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that will allow you to avoid risks, determine appropriate behavior, decide on priorities, and understand the consequences of your actions is still under construction!

“The skills you practice as a child and pre-teen become much sharper in the teenage years; and those practiced reluctantly, if at all, will diminish on your brain’s hard-disk drive,” writes Judith Newman, an author and columnist.2 In other words, when it comes to brain neurons, early on we need to use them or lose them!

Education

This aspect of neural development is the likely reason that education is one of the key ingredients of Act I, an ingredient we need to have gathered when our brain circuitry is being established. Early education is particularly critical in determining cognitive function in old age—at least in Western cultures.

Many important studies show that lifelong learning is one element found in happy, healthy older people. It has even been shown that for every added year of education you receive, your life is likely to last more than a year longer! In her book A Long Bright Future, Dr. Laura Carstensen, the founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, says, “Although income level and occupational status are influential, when push comes to shove, I think most social scientists would put their money on education as the most important factor in ensuring longer lives.”3 Dr. Carstensen goes on to explain that educated people have better jobs, earn more money, live in safer neighborhoods, lead healthier lives with less stress, and manage their health care better when they do get sick. It may be too late to do much about your education in the developmental sense, but other studies show that learning new things at any age affects one’s brain synapses and has a positive health impact. We can try to keep learning, and we can ensure that younger people—our grandchildren, perhaps—receive a good education. Do you think you might want to go back and study some more? Lots of people of all ages are doing so these days, and schools are making it more convenient for us.

Gender Identity

Another central factor in Act I involves how we have internalized our gender identity—what goes into being a girl or a boy. This is more culturally determined than we realize. As the spiritual leader and philosopher Krishnamurti once said, “You think you are thinking your thoughts, you are not; you are thinking the culture’s thoughts.” When it comes to gender distinctions, early on the culture’s thoughts profoundly determine who we become. Starting in Act I, boys and girls internalize messages about gender and society’s expectations. If we do not become conscious of these unspoken communications