Aging, Family, and the Crisis of Disconnection
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
What We Learned Taking Care of Our Grandma for 3 Weeks
In a world so full of disconnection, mental health problems, and poor incentives in the healthcare industry, it is a real struggle to know how to manage our aging population and personally, how to care for our extended families.
We just got back from taking care of our grandma for three weeks after rushing over, driving 1,000 miles across the country, to manage a medical crisis as well as trying to think through the goals, complications, and environments that influence how modern families operate. In the podcast above we recount our experience and discuss how to set goals, why it's so hard, what we can do, and what we really need to best support aging family members.
How Families Have Changed
The general connotation around the word family is still very much influenced by the old environment we used to be in. Family were the people you grew up with, shared culture, experiences, and history with, relied on in times of struggle, and knew better than anyone else. This seems to influence our idea of family today where we think of closeness and shared history.
However, the reality on the ground has radically changed. With families moving apart, rarely seeing each other, leading completely different lives with different circumstances, it is no longer a simple issue of how to engage with family and how our extended families play a role in our lives.
When we first went over to see our grandma along with many other family members it was difficult to know what our goal really was. Who are we here to support, how are we supposed to help, and what is the long term vision of what we are working towards?
Hopelessness and Aging
Humans are either growing or deteriorating. Our bodies and minds are adaptive systems, they don't just stay the same if you leave them alone. We are either working towards a good direction, or we're probably slipping in the wrong direction. Especially in todays world, there are so many incentives pulling us in the wrong direction: distraction, isolation, meaninglessness, and confusion.
It seems our modern world is very confused about the purpose and place for aging family members. Without an understanding of how to integrate them into our lives, learn from their experience, and find ways for them to continue to contribute to society, they become simply a burden to manage. Because the world has changed so much many older people may find themselves thinking that perhaps their wisdom and influence has become obsolete. Supposedly, with more experience you can help younger generations manage problems because you have faced those same problems yourself. However, the nature of problems today can seem so different.
This is a dramatic change, and an extremely important one for us to consider. Because without a feeling of purpose, and real ways to add value, our older population will not simply become content with being purposeless. Purposeless becomes hopelessness, and hopelessness does not do well for one's physical and mental health.
The Opportunity
The opportunity here is that our problems today are not so different from before that older generations cannot be of value. While incentives and technology have changed drastically, human nature has not. Today, the wisdom we are most in need of is that of timeless nature. The kind of wisdom that tells you what actually makes you happy in the long run, what kind of people make for good friends or a good spouse, the kinds of things that haven't changed even amongst the most drastic period of innovation witnessed in human history.
There is so much room for growth to understand how to help older generations add value and find their place in society. And I think this is perhaps the most important way to help the mental health problem in older generations, which certainly has knock on effects on physical health.
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In our podcast we go into much more detail as to our specific experiences over the past three weeks, and how we have approached these problems in our lives. However, I think the main thing we witnessed was enormous room for growth in how we approach these problems. In a world where it seems everyone is worried about AI taking all our jobs, you need only look around to see the vast opportunity for improvement in everything from how we engage with our families to how we think about purpose.
Hope you enjoy the podcast! Please let us know your thoughts :)
