Practical living
A sense of purpose
Forget ageing well , it ’ s what we do that counts .
By Mike Rungie
We don ’ t get up in the morning to age well , we get up to do something . Something we like doing , that lets us give back , shapes the day , broadens our circle , lifts our spirits and keeps us healthy .
So why as we get older does the empire require us to retire from ‘ doing well ’ to ‘ ageing well ’. Research tells us that this is what we hate most about getting older : the way society strips us of our ‘ doing ’ roles .
Along with the loss of roles goes loss of the perks that come with roles : purpose , relationships , reputation , growth , structure , inclusion , and opportunity – important stuff that ’ s hard to get any other way . So , how does the empire do this
‘ role-stripping ’?
It ’ s pretty clever . It set up a ‘ wounding pathway ’ that starts by retiring you from your mid-life , with no offer of next stage purposeful activities . It encourages you to start being ‘ kind to yourself ’ by backing off on learning and growing . Because you aren ’ t doing much , it reduces your income . And so that everybody goes along with what ’ s happened to you , it images you as full-time recreational at best , but mostly as having no purpose .
And in our world no purpose means no value .
Without ‘ roles ’ there ’ s really no way for older people to be part of society . We get all the roles and the good things that come with them , and older people get to watch us from the sidelines .
It ’ s so cleverly and deeply embedded in the social norms of our lives that we ’ re convinced to embrace it as a long holiday and look forward to it . Which means we all go along with it , and changing it will be very difficult .
Instead , we looked to those exceptional older people who have managed to escape it . What we found is that they always sustain the ‘ role-enablers ’ that younger people use to get and keep their roles , and that they have mostly invented their own roles .
Younger people have six role-enablers : money and investing in yourself ; skills and reputation ; a home ; products and services ; networks that increase what ’ s possible ; and a sense of purpose . Not only is having these in place actively discouraged for older people , the services set up to support them universally don ’ t offer them , and even require older people to give them up .
There are no visible role models with purposeful activities that show us the
“ In our world no
purpose means no value .
‘ role-path ’ for this next life stage . We found examples of older people active in 12 role areas .
We found older people setting up and joining social enterprises ; volunteering in ways that didn ’ t look like volunteering ; networking and learning with purpose ; investing in causes ; taking time to adventure ; joining up with younger people to add wisdom without the war stories ; enabling younger people to be productive ; taking community leadership roles younger people no longer had time for ; forming new-look multigenerational family arrangements ; creating in ways that come with being around for a while ; writing down stuff no one else has time for ; and working in new ways .
But even waving the essential building blocks of role models and role-enablers in front of older people seems to not be enough for them to escape the rolestripping destiny laid out for them by the empire .
What organisations like Modern Elder Academy and Mindset for Life have found is that older people struggle to make the transition from mid-life roles to the very different next-stage roles . They found that making complex life transitions is a skill that older people often don ’ t have . So , they teach them , to spot and step into role opportunities when their old mindset says none are on offer . They say that these transitioning skills should be offered to all older people . Which led us to examine just what skills are taught to older people . Pretty well none .
Aged care and other services do everything but skill older people to secure roles . They provide high quality beds but no reason to get out of them .
Why would a sector dedicated to the wellbeing of older people be so blind , with such disastrous consequences ?
It ’ s looking like aged care might have grown a bit too close to the empire , becoming solid contributors to the wounding pathway , and resistant to being constructively disobedient of the empire ’ s bidding . ■
Mike Rungie specialises in the intersection between good lives and aged care , and is a member of a number of boards and committees . agedcareinsite . com . au 25