What holds you back from living a full life?
What is it that holds us back from living the fullest life possible as we age?
Most of life is about moving forward, achieving, acquiring and growing.
The older we get, the greater the likelihood that challenges will impact our journey, but what holds us back is more about mindset than arthritis.
Challenging assumptions
Challenging our assumptions, and especially those of others, when we age and acquire limitations is a fulltime job.
The reaction people have to some of the external changes of aging, like use of a cane or a hearing aid add to the burdens we already may be dealing with.
I talk with many people who refuse to accept any assistance or device that may indicate that they are growing older. We are a culture of shame and ridicule for what is one of the richest and most meaningful seasons of life.
Because I acquired MS at an early age, with a severe attack that affected my mobility, vision and cognition, I had the opportunity to challenge every assumption I had or that I heard.
I continued with a pattern of relapse and remission until my fifties, when my edgy neurons decided to stay quiet for a long season, but it wasn’t until my 70’s that I realized I had been given a gift of living my old age early, and I found the courage to begin writing about it.
This journey has taught me a lot about aging, especially how the damage from unchallenged assumptions adds to the problems we already have.
Approaching life from a different angle
Sometimes approaching life from a different angle, perhaps seated, allows us to see things from a different perspective.
There is nothing like the joy of a child who can look at you from eye level and discuss the pros and cons of using wheels. They are never too proud or embarrassed to say “Gee…that looks like fun. Can I use your wheelchair when you are done with it?
Unfortunately people often assume that using any kind of assistive device means you are ‘less than’, or unable in some way.
Years ago I was using two forearm crutches and had developed a style of going through the heavy doors of a large store by planting one to hold it open, walking through and releasing it behind me.
One day a man wanted to help as he was heading out the same door. He grabbed it, and pushed it wide. Of course this threw off every point of balance I had and I landed directly into his arms.
That would have been alright, I suppose, had I been looking for a hug, but I really was only after some new socks and a butter dish.
The shame of using an assistive device
This and other experiences cause me to ponder what it is about using an assistive device that so upends (literally) people that they will not consider using a cane or a walker or, heaven forbid, a classy wheelchair with racing stripes, for themselves.
Bound by shame coupled with fear about what people will think, they become more and more confined to one place, doing one thing…often sitting before a TV.
Yet these same people will easily wear a pair of glasses (an assistive device for seeing), and they put on shoes for walking (assitive devices that protect feet and make a hike easier).
They think nothing of using a cell phone to communicate or a watch to tell time. Again, assistive devices without which we would all be handicapped.
What is the difference? I believe it is a matter of numbers. If everyone else is doing it, this must be normal. That’s why glasses are no longer eschewed by young people. They are a sign of class!!
I can use an oven instead of an open fire because everyone knows that ovens are safer, easier, and more useful.
I feel the same way about mobility devices, but, you see, not everyone has a cane in the way that ovens have become ubiquitous. Or shoes. Or glasses.
Style is not related to worth
There is a stereotype about growing old and using assistive devices that I would love to dismantle. A change in style (ie, how we navigate or see or listen) is not the same as a change in worth or even capacity.
With today’s technology it is possible to write a book with no hands (or eyes) through the use of dictation and ai-transcription.
It is possible to drive a car without legs or raise children without arms. We admire people who ‘overcome’ a handicap, and yet in our culture we assign our elders to a place of dependency, lower expectations and shame.
Are we expected to ‘overcome’ old age?! Are we a failure for using a cane or a wheelchair? I believe the only way to overcome old age is to die early. Not my choice!!
In a society that quantifies success we are up against a standard of measurement that we can never meet. Counting our achievements will always be a diminishing experience. We look to see how many mittens got knitted or how many quarts of tomatoes were canned. In my case, I count the number of words I got written towards finishing a book I am working on.
When we reach whatever age seems ‘old’ we get to define success a lot differently. On days when I don’t ‘accomplish’ much on my to-do list, I can be eminently successful at gratitude for the sun, patience with my grandchildren, and forgiving of myself and others.
These are things I wasn’t all that good at 27 years ago when my first granddaughter was born.
Productivity is overvalued
Certainly industrialization post WWII into which some of us were born, shaped our expectations. We become either ‘useful’ or not, depending on our capacity to produce more widgets.
I suggest that it is those things that cannot be monetized (laughter, wisdom, insight, love…) that are worth more than gold. And where do we find the biggest supply of these things if it isn’t in our elders?
I find myself laughing at all the ways I have tried to become ‘successful’ until I realized that I was born successful. I was set on my feet and expected to fall. I drooled on my bib as I learned to feed myself and received smiles. I ran around in circles for the sheer joy of it. There was no right or wrong.
Until I become “too big” for that. It seems that the bigger I got the less my stumbling was celebrated—or tolerated— and I was judged instead, especially for running in circles.
I look around at society today and am hard pressed to find celebration for a 90 year old who is drooling (“Poor old man”) or a 60 year old using a wheelchair. (“She must not have taken good care of herself.”)
I see 70 year old people who refuse to use a cane to help them walk more or farther for fear of what people will think. And I went to a funeral recently where everything that was celebrated took place for this lady when she was young.
What makes life full when dementia moves in?
She had spent her final years in a nursing home with dementia and had no longer recognized her family when they visited.
There was nothing shared about her undying spirit to watch the robin outside her window, or the tunes she continued to hum, or her humble way of nodding thanks when she was helped to eat.
She didn’t live in a world of right or wrongs. She lived a life as fully as she could, with an occasional smile to acknowledge a pleasure only she recognized.
It is my hope that I have opportunity to take advantage of any device available to live life in the fullest way possible until my last breath.
And if at some point I am drooling, confused and confined to bed I want people to know I lived (and am living) a successful life, not measured by my productivity but by my love.
If all I can do is breathe, and listen, and feel, and smile, isn’t that enough to honor and celebrate?
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