“An Insider’s Look at Old Age”
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MiltonCrum
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Sun May 08, 2011 2:45 pm
“An Insider’s Look at Old Age”
I am 87 years old and I live in an old folks home. I have just written a paper about being old. A number of fellow-residents said the paper helped them understand themselves and that they are giving copies to their adult children both to help them understand how we have changed and to prepare them for their own old age. If you would like to read the paper, you can do so by searching for "old-old age" Knol in Google or "old-old age" in Google Knol. The Knol title is "An Insider's Look at Old Age," and it comes up with my screen-name "Theodicy" before my actual name "Milton Crum." Your reactions to the paper?
“An Insider’s Look at Old Age”
I suspect ForumGarden has never before received so honored and distinguished a visitor. When I have finished reading the paper (which might run to several days) I'll bring this thread up and provide feedback.
Thank you for your post.
Thank you for your post.
Nullius in verba ... ☎||||||||||| ... To Fate I sue, of other means bereft, the only refuge for the wretched left.
When flower power came along I stood for Human Rights, marched around for peace and freedom, had some nooky every night - we took it serious.
Who has a spare two minutes to play in this month's FG Trivia game! ... My other OS is Slackware.
When flower power came along I stood for Human Rights, marched around for peace and freedom, had some nooky every night - we took it serious.
Who has a spare two minutes to play in this month's FG Trivia game! ... My other OS is Slackware.
“An Insider’s Look at Old Age”
I'm quite taken with Richard Posner's notion that "there may well come a point at which it is more illuminating to think of two or more persons 'time-sharing' the same identity than of one person having different preferences". Another member of ForumGarden once suggested that after seven years there was so little of a person's behaviour or interests remaining that they were effectively a new creation which happened to inherit memories from previous occupants. Taking the only example I can analyse - myself - there's a lot to be said for it as a description. I can't recall any moment in my life where the person from seven years earlier still existed. I can recall events from previous decades but they're not who I am. The recollections are tools which (in the main) benefit my present self. What I choose to do and how I choose to do it, what I consider important and what I despise, are aspects of me; they were rarely aspects of those former persons.
"Experiential knowledge [can] only be gained through experiencing old age first-hand" is tautologous and consequently unhelpful. Old age is foreign territory in that I've not lived it, but I've spent enough time as a gofer for old men to know a lot about the life they find themselves coping with. If I jot some notes about a couple of them I might illustrate some of my impressions, I can't immediately see a better way of doing it.
Twenty years ago a very perceptive minister asked whether I could enable a local elder to get to a weekend residential annual conference. It was, in retrospect, aimed as much at helping me as it was for fixing an immediate pastoral issue. Wilfred Little was by then already in his nineties, was past president of the Hymn Society and its last remaining founder member and he felt unreconciled to the possibility of not managing to get there. I ended up accompanying him to the next four, collating remnant manuscripts he wanted to prepare for publication, learning a lot about hymnody from him and hearing tales of life as an ordinand and minister in Primitive Methodism during the Great Depression, before the British Methodist church re-united in 1932. The person I am now is much influenced by Wilfred Little's many conversations over tea.
I was going to mention Dennis Hearle and Raymond George's successful fundraising to refurbish Charles Wesley's house in Bristol as a study centre, I did quite a bit of gofering for those two as well. What I learned was their determination to be useful, for a given definition of useful that often nobody else could fathom. Retirement hadn't dawned on either of them, no longer having official duties merely gave them more opportunity to conclude unfinished business. I don't think I've ever seen anyone get through so much work so efficiently as Raymond George in his eighties, Lord knows what he was like before he gave up his full time posts. They may well have faced each day with gritted teeth but they never, in my hearing, complained.
You quote Posner as writing "if society is changing rapidly, the rational young may not be much interested in what the old know". In my experience he's wrong. I suspect he's wrong more widely than just in my experience. You, I understand, were ordained before Harry Truman's term of office ended in the White House. I simply cannot believe there isn't a queue of people eager to hear you tell them at first hand how, for example, expectations have varied from then until now, and if they can't readily visit you then you can definitely engage with them on forums like this one.
Finally, if your experience of the old folks' home involves being patronized by some of the staff then get the buggers retrained or have them replaced, they're obviously unsuited to the environment. I'd be unhappy if my gravestone carried "He didn't want to upset anyone" under the name and dates.
"Experiential knowledge [can] only be gained through experiencing old age first-hand" is tautologous and consequently unhelpful. Old age is foreign territory in that I've not lived it, but I've spent enough time as a gofer for old men to know a lot about the life they find themselves coping with. If I jot some notes about a couple of them I might illustrate some of my impressions, I can't immediately see a better way of doing it.
Twenty years ago a very perceptive minister asked whether I could enable a local elder to get to a weekend residential annual conference. It was, in retrospect, aimed as much at helping me as it was for fixing an immediate pastoral issue. Wilfred Little was by then already in his nineties, was past president of the Hymn Society and its last remaining founder member and he felt unreconciled to the possibility of not managing to get there. I ended up accompanying him to the next four, collating remnant manuscripts he wanted to prepare for publication, learning a lot about hymnody from him and hearing tales of life as an ordinand and minister in Primitive Methodism during the Great Depression, before the British Methodist church re-united in 1932. The person I am now is much influenced by Wilfred Little's many conversations over tea.
I was going to mention Dennis Hearle and Raymond George's successful fundraising to refurbish Charles Wesley's house in Bristol as a study centre, I did quite a bit of gofering for those two as well. What I learned was their determination to be useful, for a given definition of useful that often nobody else could fathom. Retirement hadn't dawned on either of them, no longer having official duties merely gave them more opportunity to conclude unfinished business. I don't think I've ever seen anyone get through so much work so efficiently as Raymond George in his eighties, Lord knows what he was like before he gave up his full time posts. They may well have faced each day with gritted teeth but they never, in my hearing, complained.
You quote Posner as writing "if society is changing rapidly, the rational young may not be much interested in what the old know". In my experience he's wrong. I suspect he's wrong more widely than just in my experience. You, I understand, were ordained before Harry Truman's term of office ended in the White House. I simply cannot believe there isn't a queue of people eager to hear you tell them at first hand how, for example, expectations have varied from then until now, and if they can't readily visit you then you can definitely engage with them on forums like this one.
Finally, if your experience of the old folks' home involves being patronized by some of the staff then get the buggers retrained or have them replaced, they're obviously unsuited to the environment. I'd be unhappy if my gravestone carried "He didn't want to upset anyone" under the name and dates.
Nullius in verba ... ☎||||||||||| ... To Fate I sue, of other means bereft, the only refuge for the wretched left.
When flower power came along I stood for Human Rights, marched around for peace and freedom, had some nooky every night - we took it serious.
Who has a spare two minutes to play in this month's FG Trivia game! ... My other OS is Slackware.
When flower power came along I stood for Human Rights, marched around for peace and freedom, had some nooky every night - we took it serious.
Who has a spare two minutes to play in this month's FG Trivia game! ... My other OS is Slackware.
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MiltonCrum
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Sun May 08, 2011 2:45 pm
“An Insider’s Look at Old Age”
Correction to my original post. "An Insider's Look at Old Age" (2011) under the title “I’m Old” is at http://www.ahpcc.org.uk/pdf/old.pdf. I have now written “I’m Frail” (2014). Online at http://www.ahpcc.org.uk/imfrail.pdf. I also wrote “Self-esteem/OKness” because being old and useless threatens self-esteem. Online at http://www.ahpcc.org.uk/pdf/selfesteem.pdf. “Enduring Significance” addresses the hope that our lives count. Online at http://www.ahpcc.org.uk/pdf/enduring.pdf. All four items are on the website of the Association of Hospice & Palliative Care Chaplains in the UK. Responses are welcome. Milton Crum