"The Weight of a Life that Matters"

Born on May 30, 1929, Nancy K. Schlossberg is one rare 95 year old lady who today continues to inspire and encourage not just those of us of a certain age but everyone - young and old - faced with the constancy of life's changes, challenges and the inevitable transitions we all go through - particularly that of facing the inevitability of aging.  She has written ten books that include, "Too Young to be Old", "Revitalizing Retirement" and "Retire Smart, Retire Happy".

What caught my attention is this one little quote from her:

"The goal is not just to add years to life, but to ensure those years still hold the weight of a life that matters."

That led to the present participle 'mattering' (as in English grammar) embraced by modern psychologists:

"Mattering is defined by researchers as feeling valued by ourselves, our family, our friends, our colleagues, and society — and then having an opportunity to add value back."

Ms. Schlossberg is Professor Emerita at the University of Maryland. After her husband passed away in 2011, she had wanted to move to a retirement community and perhaps to transition later to an assisted living facility but her son told her that she was too young for that.  Thus began her motivation to inspire people in dealing with the inevitable changes that each one of us must go through at every stage of our lives or how to transition from one  to the next.

The timeline of her life is quite remarkable when we consider that she was a newborn when the stock market crashed in 1929 which ushered the Great Depression; she was just six years old when the Social Security Act (SS) was enacted; she was not even a teenager when the second World War began; she was a teenager when the boom years started (birth of the baby boomers); and she was an adult to witness the unprecedented growth of the country  and the USA's rise to economic and military dominance from the late 50s. 

Her generation, commonly referred to as the "Silent Generation" - with the surviving numbers  getting leaner with each passing day - is characterized by traditional values and work ethic, known to "prioritize stability and security in their personal and professional lives". Their contribution to post WWII economic growth was measurably significant.

I guess we need to listen to her.

"As a 96-year-old psychologist who has spent decades studying life transitions, Nancy K. Schlossberg has found that the most difficult shift isn't retirement itself, but the decades that follow. In co-leading a group called 'The Aging Rebels' in Sarasota, Florida, Schlossberg has observed a recurring theme among those in their 80s and 90s - the 'freedom paradox', where total autonomy can lead to a sense of feeling marginalized and disconnected."

What she found in her studies was that often when retirement comes for the many who used to dream about the freedom that is presented by the euphoric prospect of not having to go to work everyday has its own challenges. After having done all the traveling (for those who can afford it) and when every bucket list was checked off, the activities or inactivity of a randomly structured life are not completely free of complications; or, if not complicated, boredom can be an inexplicably annoying intrusion.  Indeed, for some, freedom becomes a confusing paradox in the absence of structure.

The common theme of her books is, of course, all about coping with life's transitions along the chronological order; otherwise known as the aging process. If we begin the chronological order at the moment of retirement we find all kinds of life changes that involve financial planning, health management, social adjustments, loss of a loved one or caregiving to a loved one, just to list a few.

".. as we age, that freedom can quickly turn into a sense of feeling 'marginalized' without a clear purpose or reason to get up each day. One former nurse in Schlossberg's group described the relief of no longer having schedules or responsibilities, yet also feeling a loss of connection and competency. Schlossberg suggests that to navigate this transition, we must look past the 'bucket list' and focus on finding ways to 'matter' - to feel noticed, cared for, and depended upon."

I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs about a similarly themed subject that the price to living longer is to grow old. And to grow old is to face the reality that the once youthful and vibrant machinery that is the human body must deal with all kinds of maintenance checkups and mitigations. Not too long ago Ms. Schlossberg humorously quipped, “First of all, I’m 94, so you do spend a lot of time running from doctor to doctor, and it becomes a part-time job.” 

What are we of a certain age going to do?

1.) The relief of no longer having schedules or responsibilities can bring a feeling of loss of connection and competency. Folks who are physically able find volunteer work a wide path from which one may find access to social connections, new friendships and to common issues and pathways ordinarily not found or explored.  There is one pitfall to avoid - prolonged immersion in social media to the point of obsession. Keep track of the time spent on social media indulgence against  actual physical activities.

2. Pick up your curiosity level to that when you were a young child.  The brain wants to stay busy, so keep it doing exactly that. There is a difference between being a passive scanner of information and an active searcher of it and it is never too late to know more about how the solar system works, how  jet plane propulsion is different from propeller driven aircraft or just how it is that a plane flies at all? How is a rechargeable battery holding and keeping energy different from water behind the Hoover Dam? This may seem facetious to us but the brain does indeed want to know.  Actually, think back to when you were a child when you were full of why-after-why questions.  Where did all those level of curiosities go? What better time to pick them up than now when you have all the time in the world.

3. Don't forget to express your gratitude openly. It is one thing "to think about it", it is another to verbally say it to your loved ones and to friends.  Most of all, and this is important - express it directly, according to your faith or belief system - to a higher power because if you are convinced that you are a creature then there is ample reason to acknowledge the existence of the Creator.

4. Acknowledge each morning that each time you wake up and get out of bed is an everyday prelude that is not so easily achievable for some, even impossible for others.  Every morning is a gift to be opened, the whole day is another extension.  We might as well use it.  

5. If you are a caregiver to a spouse, a sibling, a parent or child, consider yourself the fortunate one first. Second, embrace the nobility of caregiving.

6. While taking care of our physical health is a given, devote as much time to taking care of mental and emotional health. 

7. Worried and fearful like this cat?  I wrote four years ago, after Covid, on January 1, "2022 and Managing Our Fears"

 

"How then should we manage our fears? We don't. We use fear to stay vigilant and careful, to instill discipline and to avoid doing stupid things. And Yoda would say, "Worry, however, we should not". Worrying is like treading water. You could expend a lot of energy doing it but it gets you nowhere. So, you might as well swim and go somewhere.

Still anxious over anything and everything? I have four words. Be like the cat below and "Don't Worry About It"

And gain on the weight of a life that matters

 

 

What Makes You Really You

"Through the eyes of the beholder" describes one's  perceptions of anything or anyone, often to differentiate it from how another person may perceive the same.

You are one person in the eyes of one but you could be a different one in the eyes of another; or, you can be the same person to many but you are never one person to all. Nevertheless, you are one person different from the next one.

Dr. Seuss said it best.

What you are to others is one thing.  What you are to yourself is another. This takes us to one truly unique ability that allows us to reflect on our thoughts and feelings that, as far as we know, is uniquely human - a highly complex form of self awareness where some animals are only capable of basic self-recognition.

While there are varying degrees of self awareness among certain species, we have the most advanced cognitive abilities to not only have an acute sense of self  but also to have developed a conscience as an individual and the collective sense of morality and ethical behavior as a society. 

The question is how did all of these come about? How did consciousness develop from a collection of otherwise inanimate mass of tissues, bones, fluids, blood and blood vessels, cells, molecules and atoms? You are self aware, have consciousness but none of any of your anatomy actually recognizes you.  Imagine looking behind your two eye sockets, through the lens, past the cornea and  iris, to view the world around you, and you wonder who is this entity that is doing the viewing? Actually, the upright images that you think you see are actually projected to your retina upside down:

Now, you know the brain is the one doing the correction.  It interprets it for you.  Wait. Where are you  in the midst of all of these?

Before we attempt to answer that question, let's first realize that physiologically you are not for the most part the same person that you were ten years ago. You shed your skin every 2-4 weeks. A good part of the dust that you see and clean up in your house is human dead skin. The cells of the lining of your intestines are refurbished every 2-3 days. Your red blood cells last only for about 120 days, so you get new ones every so often. You, if you still have a set of thick hair, get new hair follicles every 3-7 years while your entire skeletal system gets renewed with new bone cells every 10 years, approximately. 

You have trillions of cells in your body but what you have today are not exactly the same cells yesterday.

Suffice it to say that the physical you is not the same as the conscious you. The only part of your physiology that remains unchanged, except for maybe 10 % of it, are the neurons in your brain.  And you have oodles and oodles of them. So, is that where the real you is then?  But each individual cell in your neurons does not know you. So, it must take the entire clump of them that gives you self awareness and consciousness.  They make you you.  But how?

First this. Physiologically, you are mostly water (hydrogen and oxygen as H2O), carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, about 99 % in all. Individually, down to the atomic level, none of them knows you, yet you are this discrete being different from the next one. Speaking of down to the atomic level, every electron that orbits every proton in an atom is exactly the same electron found in every element in the universe. In other words, every electron is identically the same as the next one, regardless of whether it is in an atom in  molecules of water, watermelon seeds, the venom of a black mamba, or what is in granite or high carbon steel, etc.

So, at the electron level, we are all identical - electron by electron as with the entire universe, so to speak.

The thoughts that you currently have while reading this, then glancing away to look at the four walls, or out the window, or trying to take in what you just read, are what make up your consciousness.  You just know it is you reading. This prompted 17th century philosopher and thinker  Rene Descartes to say, "I think, therefore I am".

Eventually, what you are doing or thinking will end up in your subconscious mind.  You are what you think you are and you know that everything around you, including those already set in  your memory, and everything you know about people and stuff, and doing things with as little effort to think about how or why become part of your subconscious.

"Neuroscientists say that our subconscious mind is much more powerful than our conscious mind".

Powerful, yet it has no physical attributes that you can physically measure, weigh or touch. It's just that one discrete entity behind those two eye sockets.  But, it is you or colloquially, "You are It" .

There must be a lot more to this conscious and subconscious stuff. One of the greatest mysteries of consciousness or some kind of derivative of consciousness are stories about near death experiences.  These are about cases of people recalling what they saw or hear while clinically dead and  resuscitated afterwards.  There are differences and similarities between many of the stories, although the scientific community has doubts and have often come up with explanations rooted in psychology and natural brain activities.  There is no scientific proof or verifiable explanation of a single incident that is beyond doubt. To this day, there is no scientific basis that near death experiences (NDEs) constitute proof of life after death.

Then there are cases of out of body experiences associated with NDEs. One exceptional case, among many that had been written about, was that of Pam Reynolds Lowery, from Atlanta Georgia. She had a brain aneurysm at the brainstem and that she was not likely to survive if surgery was attempted to remove it. However, one brain surgeon did the surgery by lowering her body temperature to 50 deg F, stopped her heart and breathing and drain the blood from her brain completely to preclude rupture, her eyes taped shut and headphones over her ear that emitted "loud clicks to block auditory input". 

"Pam reported witnessing her surgery from above the doctor’s shoulder, describing specific details about surgical tools and conversations that she could not have observed through normal means. Cardiologist Michael Sabom, among other experts, has found her account persuasive, believing it adds to evidence of consciousness persisting beyond clinical death, despite skepticism attributing such experiences to anesthesia awareness".

Pam not only survived the surgery, she lived for many more years after that.

Until such time that NDEs and out of body experiences can be verified by science beyond any doubt, those shall remain in the realm of the unexplained.

After having read all of the above, and having given it some thought, won't you agree that there is no question that you being you is one of the greatest wonders of the world, much of it you don't know how and least of all, why?   There's a lot in there I inserted between the lines for your inquisitive mind, your conscious thoughts, and the power of your subconscious to explore; not the least of which is this: does your subconscious exist independently of your physical self?