That's one reason, among many, why I believe that writing - via blog or ink & paper journal writing - is invaluable in helping olders capture their past, as much as they might scoff at the idea.
Legacy writing, as it's called, does far more than recapture years. It helps olders connect to their wise self. Can hear my older friends breaking into loud guffaws at the image of themselves as a wise self. Guffaw away - that's what our older family members & friends can provide that is so sorely needed in these short attention span, rapid media days.
The long view of our elders might be often discounted in today's world, but that doesn't make it less important.
It takes an immense amount of grit for most older people to look back at their lives, even more to share it with others. I learned that through my Mom, seen it time & again with my clients. They've had it drummed into them through the media, sometimes through their families, and too often from their inner critic, that they are archaic, out of date & out of place in current society.
Sadly, that seems to be the prevailing message.
Yet, those older voices, that longer view, is as essential today as it has been at any time in our past. More so, as the politically & financially empowered seem to barge ahead in whatever direction is open, without a thought of consequences or long term outcomes.
They - we - need the voice of experience, the voice of people who have been in the hurly burly of life, been there & come out the other side.
No one was more entrenched than Mom in the belief that what she had to share, what she'd experienced, would be discounted by one & all. The very thought of posting her thoughts, her observations & commentaries, stories from her past, struck Mom as the height of narcissism. It took a lot of convincing for her to put herself out, first with this comment, then that opinion, a relevant story from her past, a distant memory of important people in her life. To Mom, these were minor moments, surely of interest only to herself. She was stunned & slowly won over as person after person responded warmly, enthusiastically to her posts.
In time, she realized that her devoted readers related to far more than her tales & commentaries - they were touched & changed by the different perspective she brought to their younger lives. Here was a living soul who'd celebrated the end of World War I, who made it through the Great Depression, who loved & lost & loved again, a woman experiencing birth, a mother devastated by the death of a child, a wife whose husband died in their early sixities, who remade her life.
Mom once mentioned to a young friend that she'd had an easy life. "Oh, Mrs. Lockhart," the younger woman - one of my classmates - replied, "Your life has been anything but easy!" It wasn't easy. Easy wouldn't have served as a lesson to the rest of us. Easy doesn't take determination & courage & a willingness to go on. Mom's life was fortunate, a far cry from easy, the result of her taking what happened - be it loss or gain, good times or bad, youth or old age - and making it work as best it can. And THAT is what hearing the stories of our older friends & relatives, even of utter strangers, can give to the rest of us.
As individuals, as a nation, we need our elders' stories. We need to help them find the willingness, determination & courage to become storytellers, to give the long view of their years, to help us find greater perspective & appreciation of what lies beyond the immediate. We are our stories, and are all the poorer without theirs.
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