Confronting the Needs of the Elderly

Imagine if you had 100 pennies, and you counted them, one by one. It does not take a very long time. Now imagine that each penny is one year of your life. 52 weeks go by so quickly. It’s no time at all. Holiday after holiday. Season after season. It all keeps going by, into the sunset. We struggle to hang on to our youth, but sooner or later, our face falls apart, and our organs start failing just like a car when it reaches 100,000 miles. Our children grow up faster than we can blink an eye.

The most important thing we can do in our lifetime is to introduce the children in our lives to the elders in our lives, before they die. This may require travel.  But do not delay! I delayed a visit to family friends in 2003 and have regretted it ever since, because they died before I ever got to see them again or introduce them to my children, whose birthdays they had unfailingly remembered by mail, their entire lives. 

There are certain people that touch your life. They are usually ordinary people with nothing special to say but they show you what it’s like to be whatever it is they are. If we didn’t have family and friends, we would have no idea what it’s like to be a normal human being. We would just sit alone in some kind of scary isolation chamber.

It would be best if all the old people of the world could sit on their rocking chairs within somebody’s living room and work on their knitting; and when they became too blind to knit, they could at least be there for anyone who needs a hug. Unfortunately, aging has become almost like a crime in this world nowadays. The elderly are often treated like prisoners.

Recently, I visited an old age home to see a 99 year old woman related to me by marriage. She was healthy but too weak to take care of herself. Still of sound mind, she was deeply unhappy. She could neither hear nor see very much, so all she did was sit alone near the window in a chair. That was depressing enough, but what I did not understand was why the hospital had hooked her up to an alarm that went off anytime she shifted her weight or stood up from the chair. This alarm was torturing her to the point where she felt she could not cope emotionally, and no longer wished to live. 

Well meaning people try to look after their elders, but they have full time work. Caring for an elder can be as much work as caring for a newborn baby or more, but it can actually go on past twenty years. Sooner or later, that old person is going to be sent to an old people’s home, or else they will become some family member’s full time job, when they become too weak to take care of themselves.

In particular, white people are facing an elderly population boom. The entire reason Europe invited all those controversial foreign workers was to pay the social security taxes for the aging white population. The Western lifestyle, with its small families, rebellious children, and small individual dwellings, is not equipped to meet the needs of the elderly. Most European countries have a socialist medical framework, so that takes a huge load off families, but in the US, an aging person can truly be an expensive burden. It is not possible to hire the help you need to keep an old person at home, unless you are very rich. 

Sometimes, when we think about old people, we think about what they have already accomplished and we think all is said and done, it’s all memories from here on. But their time is just as valuable as our time! Only God knows how much time they have left, or what they have left to think, learn, say and do.

What if, that which a person could accomplish between 60 and 80 would be considered as interesting and important as what people try to accomplish between 20 and 40? It’s the same amount of time. Ageism is the false belief that young people are more interesting than old people. All those revolutionary groups trying to save the world better make room for the elders, because not only do they exist, but usually they have something to tell us. 

When the things older people have to say are not nice – whether they are unpleasant truths, unfounded criticism, or outdated politics, it can be easier to just shut them out of our lives. In many cases, there can be a direct connection between unhappy parent-child relationships and the distance between the grown up child and the aging parent. If there is lingering resentment, or a personality conflict, taking care of someone you don’t like, or who makes you feel bad about yourself, would definitely be a real trial.  

So, if you have children, take care of them well, because the amount of cuddling and positive emotional reinforcement they have received from you will probably have a direct impact on their level of personal interest in taking care of you when you grow up. If your mother weaned you too young and put you in day care when you were a baby so that she could go to work, perhaps you will feel justified putting her in a home so you can concentrate on your career. Unless you can find a way to break the cycle of emotional violence and learn to give to your parents what you have not received. This would require deep meditation and soul searching.

The extended family structure is essential to maintaining the well being of all its members so that work and responsibilities can be shared. It is too much for one person to take care of a child, let alone an aging person. If it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a village to take care of the grandparents.

We are all going to meet on Judgment Day anyway, so it makes sense to meet each other earlier and try to make amends while we are still living. Why not. There are so many things we could care about – why not care about the people who have the most rights upon you?

The Benefits of Befriending Older People

One of the greatest things about reaching forty is that all people become truly interesting to talk to, regardless of age. When we are younger, we are generally encouraged to spend time socializing with people within our age group, who are experiencing the same life changes and struggles as ourselves. But finally, at a certain point, we reach a plateau and things are not changing that much anymore. We are simply living our lives. Often, we have made certain sacrifices so that we can provide a stable environment for the younger generation to thrive and grow and go through their own changes, very beautiful to observe. Other people come into focus, rather than the mere requirements of our own personal development. As we age, the years roll by faster and faster, like a rock rolling down a mountainside, but we fear less, because we have generally learned what to expect.
By the time we reach forty, we can truly interact as peers with anyone from age 20 to 60. It’s like being on a boat in the middle of a big lake and you can see the horizon from every angle of your vision and only the sky above. It’s a dizzying and electrifying time of life to experience! We are old enough to advise the younger generation on their path, and yet able to question the older generation still living. We must use our social skills to pry the personal stories out of our elders because there is probably nothing more valuable on earth, certainly not cash or gold, than the jokes and life tales of our elders. During my four decades, I have written tens of thousands of pages, but there are still things I have never mentioned to anyone. In many cases, it’s just because nobody ever asked. So, just ask an older person today, anything! Even if you have to beg them to tell you something that will make you really laugh hard or help you gain perspective on whatever it is!

Older people know what things are worth putting energy into and what issues are best to just drop like a hot potato. Heather, a woman with long white flowing hair who is still turning away suitors, who raised 8 children in a 2 bedroom apartment, only one her own, has many stories. Her advice regarding divorce? Her primary regret was that she spent way too much time in a state of rage at her ex-husband. “Think of him as a babysitter who sometimes shows up,” she advised others.
Joe, a semi-retired real estate attorney, admitted that when pressed, he told his wife whom he was planning to vote for. His wife protested in astonishment, and he explained to her that this is why he does not discuss politics with anyone. A brilliant part of growing up is realizing that not everyone has to agree with you, in order for you to love them; And also, that you can love someone totally and completely – without telling them everything. But you can really enjoy the stuff you discuss!
George, a retired musician, is absolutely thrilled by new inventions such as a microphone that plugs into an ipad, and thinks that Youtube is the best new thing since the car. Such things make his face light up like a child.

Leah, a housewife in New Jersey explains: “My first husband believed the conspiracy theory that America never actually landed on the moon, based on the observation that in the photo, the flag appeared to be waving in the wind. My second husband, who was older and remembered that day clearly, explained that it was in all the news back then that the US brought to the moon a wooden replica of a flag waving in the wind, just to look good for the photos!” Many old mysteries can be explained away simply by talking to people who were alive at that time. You don’t actually have to marry them, thankfully, but maybe feed them.
People who have lived through several decades can provide a certain amount of insight that we lack. When we have older friends, we can benefit from their successes and their mistakes. It is especially important to talk to people who have spent time in prison, or overcome major illnesses, for during that time they probably thought about a lot of things that we never had time to think about. And, unlike many of us, they really may have figured out what was important to them and what they wanted to do with their lives once they got their health and freedom back.

When we were young and had no idea about life, it appeared that there were so many choices and so many possible paths. Yet the older we became and the more wisdom we acquired, the fewer choices and paths there remained – because when you can predict the probable outcome of events, you will usually only choose the action that will lead to the desired outcome and avoid other choices. Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri calls it “The Freedom of No Choice” in his book by that title. This is the Islamic Middle Path between the competing philosophies of Destiny vs. Free Will.
If your will were completely aligned with God’s will, and if you had all the information about every variable past and present, you would make the absolutely best choice in every situation. However, in most cases, you are fluctuating in between the opinions of your various internal selves and reacting emotionally. Loss is an inevitable part of going through time on this earth. Only loss enables us to fully experience the value of what we had. As we grow in spiritual experience, we learn which actions will lead to loss, and which actions will lead to gain. At the same time, growing older helps many of us to appreciate and enjoy God’s everyday gifts, like the weather, a phone call, or our eyesight. The more you learn to pray and meditate deeply with a clear mind, you will more quickly recognize and fix mistakes that you have made as they occur. This truly takes decades of practice.