“When we do on old one, all your phones light up and it’s like a galaxy of stars,” Paul McCartney joked during his 2022 headline slot at Glastonbury, “but when we do a new song, it’s like a black hole.”

The joke contained a wistful acknowledgment of an uncomfortable truth in popular culture — that after a certain age, an artist’s creative powers begin to wane. Warhol after The Factory, the Stones post “Exile on Main Street,” and McCartney himself in the decades after the Beatles — somehow the magic just begins to wear off, the hits become elusive, and the audience starts to retreat into the back-catalogue.

Since the birth of the teenager in the 1950s, and as popular music, fashion, and art became dominant, attitudes began to shift. Young people came out of the shadows of their war-weary parents. They were no longer willing to conform and stay quiet. They wanted a voice. As the ’50s gave way to the ’60s, that voice got louder and grew in confidence, leading to remarkable artistic and social revolutions.

For the most part, the growing influence of youth has been positive. It has led to some remarkable art and, in the West at least, a more just and tolerant society. However, in recent years the dominance of youth has taken on a darker edge.

Increasingly, there is a growing contempt for older people, with an assumption that they have little more to contribute, as if all of life reflected the waning powers of pop artists. This reached its apotheosis in the “OK, boomer” memes of the last couple of years, with its implication that if you were over 40 you were a dinosaur.

I believe it is time to debunk the myth that creativity and usefulness decline with age. It is obviously ageist and there is, frankly, no evidence outside of ephemeral popular culture — quite the opposite. No one would argue that Beethoven’s late Quartets were the work of a declining mind. Or that Seamus Heaney’s final poem, “In A Field” was not up there with his most moving. Toni Morrison’s brilliant late writing is heavy with the wisdom of a lifetime.

As with many fields, the older artist has learned to reduce the noise and increase the amplitude of the signal as they work with greater experience, maturity, and technical finesse. With age comes an economy of movement.

This applies to medicine and my field of image-guided surgery. My mentor Daniel Rufenacht imprinted upon me the importance of economy of movement during a procedure. The more intense the moment the less I appear to be doing. When I am passing a 2mm Murphy needle down a 2.2mm gap in a fractured cervical vertebra, only my fingertips are moving, and the needle is going into the spine at less than a millimetre every 20 seconds. There is no room for error.

I have learned, over time, that in medicine you can always do more, but you can never do less. These insights come with experience, and that wisdom is based on decisions I never want to make again. The greater ability I have today to devise solutions to complex problems is directly related to my age and experience. For knowledge-based professions such as mine, creativity demonstrably increases with longevity.

Paul McCartney wrote enough great songs for a lifetime in a youthful window of incandescence. But just because his career was front loaded, doesn’t mean the rest of the older generation should be written off.

So OK, boomer, do not go quietly, do not accept dismissal; instead harvest from your life experience, from your years that have winnowed out tolerated associates, leaving trusted friends, and teach us what you know.

Dr. Kieran Murphy is a pioneering clinician, researcher, teacher, and prolific inventor with over eighty patents to his name. His innovations, including the Murphy needle and Murphy cement, are used worldwide. After graduating from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, he led the Division of Interventional Neuroradiology at Johns Hopkins University and later held significant roles at the University of Toronto and University Health Network. Dr. Murphy has authored numerous publications, mentored hundreds of students, and continues to inspire the next generation of medical inventors.

When not advancing medical science, Dr. Murphy enjoys racing cars and reading widely. His book The Essence of Invention aims to encourage everyone, regardless of age, to embrace their inventive potential.

Learn more at https://kieranmurphy.org/about/ and follow him on Substack: https://theessenceofinvention.substack.com/