Addressing the elephant in the room.

Hello, Elephant speaking. You’re probably wondering why on earth would you listen to the advice of a 30 year old about aging well. Well, age is just a number right? Isn’t that what our youth-obsessed culture says? Well, to be counter-cultural for a moment (though probably not like the movement you lived through — side note, I would love to be a hippie – minus the drugs – peace and love, sign me up), it’s not necessarily the length of time you’ve lived, it’s how much life you’ve lived in it. Plus a heaping dose of humility and curiosity.

I think of it like the Farmers Insurance commercial – “I know a thing or two because I’ve seen a thing or two.” Being a hospice social worker for years teaches you quite a bit, and I’d like to pass that knowledge along to you in hopes of preventing some of the avoidable situations folks often find themselves in.

Back to that humility and curiosity piece, I have the privilege of working with many centenarians in my work, as well as octa- and nonagenarians. I do not pretend to have the knowledge that can only be gleaned from years and years around the sun. I will have to wait my turn and pray I’m lucky enough to see those years. However, the best way to bridge a gap is to try to meet in the middle and the best way to do that is – you guessed it – with humility and curiosity. Meaning: we don’t know everything about everything, so let’s explore to try to find out a bit more. For my part, I explore folks’ life stories and what they’re bringing to a situation. For their part, I simply ask that folks return the favor to see what I bring to the situation. Which in this case, is a knowledge of gerontology both in the academic sense and in the practical sense from years in the field.

So there we go – you bring what you have and I’ll bring what I have and we’ll make excellent life decisions together. How about it?