Older people: strangers in our century
modafinil price per pill п»їWe have an increasingly aging and experienced world. As our quality of life has improved, so has our life expectancy. Where once we were preparing to die, we are now practically beginning to live. Hence psychology, like other health branches, is focusing more and more on the elderly.
Legs, arms and heads that have already retired, but in which there are still a lot of concerns and dreams. Grandchildren or no grandchildren, more and more people are reaching the age of 70 with the physical and mental capacity to withstand a high level of activity. Their faces may be scarred by the passage of time, but their muscles are still strong and their heads are still agile.
Loneliness in the elderlyPerhaps we are talking about the evil of this century, that feeling of being in communication with everyone and at the same time of not being in communication with anyone. Of collecting superficial conversations about the timetable and the weather, and of deep conversations slipping through our fingers as if they were liquid.
In this sense, the elderly suffer in silence from the technology gap. They see around them a world they can hardly understand, which they feel as a very steep slope when they try to approach it. Phones, computers, tablets, screens are, after all, for them, a universe without gravity to which they find no meaning.
Somehow, this makes them feel excluded, it incubates in them the feeling that they are far away from their children or grandchildren because they cannot find a way to "reach" them. They feel that the screens offer many of the answers that they once would have given as a voice of experience.
This invisible line runs deep. Our elders are used to narrating, to putting spoken words to their thoughts, to meeting from week to week or day to day. To calling each other on the phone, picking up the receiver... and feeling the buttons sink in when they are dialed. This is the world in which they have spent most of their lives in order to understand and be understood, and which now seems to have become obsolete.
The underlying problem in this regard is not the form, which in itself is the obstacle, it is what it prevents. It prevents the development of common interests, of shared games of dialogues with pauses in which even boredom can be avoided. A communication for which no one has a ready, willing and ready competence in his hands.
Moreover, in this sense, we are not only talking about words. We also talk about kisses and hugs that are not given by emoticons. The real ones, skin to skin.
The accumulation of lossesAccumulating years also implies accumulating grief. Lost situations that will never come back. Situations of childhood in which the immediate world was a myriad of novelties and where mischief bore the stamp of those who eat life in bites. The children of course.
The first boys or the first girls, the first real love, the friends who shared with us the dawn, the hangover days or the notebooks that in their pages welcomed all those plans, with the best common denominator that we have calculated, the illusion. The first job, the first paycheck, the first decision with no turning back.
The last race, the last day at work, the last child, the last drink, the last dance or the last walk. Thus, to accumulate years is to accumulate memories and, when the last time comes, it also means to accumulate activities that, due to physical limitations, must be abandoned.
Withdrawals that involve natural processes and that can become a problem when the elderly person incorporates them to a main place in his definition. When he/she feels that the weight of these activities is greater than the weight of those activities for which he/she is not impeded. A current reality, which represents this very well, can be seen every day in nursing homes.
Many of the elderly who are currently unable to care for themselves end up in nursing homes. It is a place that many are afraid of because of the meaning it has, the real one, not the one they are given. The truth is that many of the people who enter them never come out again, the truth is that many of the people who lose their physical independence keep a clear head enough to know that they will never regain it.
Perhaps this, and no other, is the main grief faced by the elderly today. A reality that is hardly talked about, hardly put into words or find a space on Facebbok or Whats App.
Because it is a sad reality that is difficult to talk about. In many cases it is as taboo a subject as sex and adolescents: we act like ostriches, hiding our heads and not intervening, when in fact, if we do it well, we can do a valuable and beautiful job.
Loneliness, lack of understanding and lack of help with grief are perhaps the workhorses, related among them, with which we can best help our elders. They are the ones who make up much of the sadness we see on their faces. In this sense, many older people are abandoned and feel abandoned before their death, they have the feeling of having been given up for dead by the generations they have cared for and watched grow up.
They would like to say, but they also have the feeling that they are in over their heads, that they are meddling where no one is calling them. On the other hand, they want attention, but they don't want to be a problem or a source of stress for their children, so they often keep quiet or show jealousy.
They have the feeling that their problems, concerns and desires no longer matter. Family members worry about them not falling ill, but not about what they think, long for or desire. That their body is what matters and not their soul; a body that is increasingly difficult to manage and that hardly hides the years in the mirror.
The way the world is set up, nursing homes are necessary, they play a fundamental role as a guarantee of care. However, it is up to us not to close the door on the outside when the elderly enter. It is up to us to continue to consider them as able-bodied people, even if their physical capacity is very limited.
It is no longer a matter of visiting them, but of asking them questions, of letting them talk about their fears and not cutting them off, of acting as minstrels of the outside world in case they are unable to go out, as writers or readers when they ask us to do so. To convey to them the feeling that they are important to us, that far from being a burden, we feel fortunate to enjoy their company.
By doing so, we will not only make our elders feel welcome within society, and when we say society, we mean within their family, but we will also teach future generations that the human side, no matter how much technology we enjoy, can never, but never, be lost, especially with those who need it the most and whom we love the most.
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