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We shouldn’t feel ashamed about ageing

Apr 10, 2018

There's nothing wrong with getting old, in fact we should be proud of it. Source: Pexels

In the first session, Sam came alone. He told me about his concern for his Dad who was living with him. According to Sam, Hector spent most of his time doing nothing.

Sam kept pushing him to do important things, like go for a walk, tidy up the yard, try out the local bowls club and the men’s shed. Hector wasn’t getting around to doing any of these things. From Sam’s perspective, Hector was depressed, and Sam didn’t know what to do.

I saw Hector in the second session. He was in his mid-70s and had stand-out issues with his hearing, the beginnings of short-term memory lapses, and with arthritis, walking was at times painful.

Hector complained of being bullied by Sam, being told what to do and being judged continuously. He just wanted Sam to give him a break. Hector said he was content with watching TV, reading the paper, doing the daily crossword puzzles, just pottering around.

Hector just wanted his son’s approval. He admitted to feeling down about the constant bickering with his son and having nowhere else to go, felt trapped.

The study of evolution reveals that life continuously adapts to changing environmental circumstances to ensure survival. For humans, the feelings and actions necessary for survival dominate our behaviour at an unconscious, automatic level without us realising it. Our instinct operates on the principle that we are more likely to survive if we are part of a group — a family, a team, a community, a culture, a nation — with one over-riding condition; we have to have some importance, some recognition or validation, some approval in the group.

From an evolution perspective, importance is necessary for survival. If our instinct decides we influence our group, it allows us to relax and feel content. It keeps us discontented and unhappy if it finds evidence for unimportance.

Sam’s instinct had ideas about what his father should have been doing with his time (what was important) and saw his father’s non-activity as reflecting on Sam’s importance in the family — as a result of his failure to care for his dad.

In this case, Sam was the one with the problem, not Hector. The collateral damage of this problem was Hector’s instinct feeling insecure as a result of Sam’s ongoing disapproval.

The reality of our world is that as we age, we have less energy, less money, less credibility (ageism), less power, less respect, less influence, less enthusiasm, less optimism, less attention. These are natural declines, and as they occur, there usually are fewer opportunities for our instinct to register importance. As our feelings of safety and security subsequently decline, so do our moods.

As we age, we need to take a more deliberate role in ensuring that our instinct continues to register self-importance, and hence group-importance. Self-importance and group-importance come from three sources:

Luckily being in the right spot at the right time with the right skills and frame of mind to do something universally outstanding. At least temporarily you will be pretty significant. This doesn’t happen very often.
Helping other people when they ask for it. To do this, you have to have heard enough to be sure of the help they want. Only when people genuinely appreciate your support, will they show it in ways that are very reassuring to your instinct.
Being sufficiently clear enough about your values of rightness, charity, goodness, loyalty so that these values provide an ongoing compass and purpose for your day to day behaviour. Deliberately doing what you believe is right on a regular basis is reassuringly important to your instinct, and as a consequence to your contentment and your happiness.