Aging's Mega Challenge Posed: Fewer Roles, Reduced Self-Image

That morass can be lessened. God gave us the lips to determine our attitude.

The Philosopher John Locke Courtesy: episteme.arstechnica.com

(SALEM, Ore.) - There is a precarious tightrope in everyone's life. It runs between two opposite points: Tradition and Transition. It is never that simple to straddle.

Tradition represents the way things are and have been for a long. long time. These are essentially habits we've used as our personal shields. Sometimes they are distractions from facing reality (although we hate like the dickens to admit that's so).

Transition is the agent of change, usually to get to a better place. This may well take extra energy and resolve to make that journey. Sometimes we program ourselves to resist and make assorted excuses.

Both T's--Tradition and Transition--hold the key to our aging process and just how adeptly we confront the real world.

Let us begin with a look at our friend, philosopher John Locke. He framed life as a blank tablet (or tabula rasa). Locke argued that we are all born with a blank slate state-of-mind, and that every event leaves its imprint, never fully erased.

In modern jargon, we can say that what we learn usually sticks with us as adults. That does influence aging.

Taking that a step further, I believe that we are social beings primarily, and our array of social roles determine our individual self-identity Needs Pyramid

This model actually builds on psychologist Abraham Maslow's pyramid of human needs: food, clothing, shelter, security from outside dangers, etc. According to Maslow, we as humans seek out satisfying those needs to assure our very survival--at any age.

Food is very basic to life, and at times we may sacrifice getting shelter to obtain a meal. The countless homeless in America can attest to that.

To this I add that most of us also construct "mental pyramids" to better ensure keeping our self-esteem as individuals. This is carried out informally. We do this by gravitating toward those social roles we find most personally satisfying. This can be, for example, as parent, sibling, child or good friend and confidant. It can be as an employee or a volunteer.

In our minds, these are social roles we cherish and savor. It connects us with other folks in a meaningful way and indeed shapes our value system. If each of us were a computer screen, these would be our icons.

Our inner thirst for these social roles and the prestige they accord to us hardly begins at retirement or even at middle age. Yes, the launching is even before kindergarten.

Our family initially helps to shape our sense of self. With supportive parents and siblings we can attain a firm foundation. Lacking these, we face obstacles in our questing after affirmation. And those odds increase incrementally.

Schools add yet another layer. Are our teachers helping the struggle for self-confidence? Do our peers promote--or deter--our search for useful social roles? Do they stand in the way of that search?

Success Quest

Growing up is never an overnight process, nor is growing old. Each of life's experiences can strengthen our resolve to forge ahead as we add social roles to our ID Roster. But conversely, each setback we face is a test for our coping and continuing skills.

If we retreat as self-proclaimed "failures", the effort to try again often seems all the harder. This becomes the invisible weather vane of aging.

As we venture into middle age, our personalities are largely shaped. Our key social roles govern who we are, or think we may become. Objectivity is ever-elusive.

Significant changes dot the human landscape. Job transitions can impact our identity. Layoff or demotion has its ripple effects. So too does a change of marital status, with divorce leaving deep emotional scars for many. Child custody battles supply yet other barriers to be surmounted.

The loss of one's parent presents us with another severed umbilical cord. That sensitive relatiionship passes into history by degrees. When a sibling passes away, yet another key social relationship is shunted into oblivion.Sudden Morass Aging intensifies all of these rites of passage. We have relied on our multiple social roles, and alas, they are slowly beginning to slip from our very grasp. We are now confronting an emerging morass: Multiple Role Attrition Syndrome (MRAS).

This is the ultimate challenge of age looming in the wings and testing our wills. MRAS greets each of us on our own terms. We never dictate the bargain, only just how resilent we choose to be.

Yes, MRAS can come about in little dribbles, or sometimes in fierce torrents. Our early lives--how we have transitioned from youth to adulthood--shall be the key players for our final scenes on this planet. Spirituality and psychology are intertwined.

Role attrition can be met in several ways. Here are the alternatives:

* Develop New Roles: Being a meaningful volunteer or opting for part-time on-call work can suffice here. As can taking a class or being a guest speaker somewhere in your community. This entails initiative.

* Recycle Memories: We can find a way to write up snatches of our past or perhaps caption our photo albums. Leaving a legacy of experiences can be priceless. For those weak in writing skills, we can go for an audio cassette. Why not?

* Consider Mentoring: That can lead to doing an enriching 1-to-1 with a young person who can look to you for cues on the road ahead. Many schools and Y's encourage this. Sometimes, a trade association may have a niche to channel our knowledge and insights to a new generation of trainees. If dynamic, we can try videotaping.

* Letters to the Editor: We oldies-but-goodies have that surplus time to scan the daily newspaper editorials and news stories. If we have passions to express, it's the perfect route to pursue. We've been eyewitnesses to history, and none others have cultivated the scope of social change that has come our way.

Physical decline can intrude in our social roles. Take canasta or mah jong. If we have been playing it for many years and glaucoma pays a visit, our abilities are curtailed. Yet with a clever, creative group of peers, they can carve out a role to compensate, be it that of pouring coffee or handing out the tiles or serving the snacks.

That morass can be lessened. God gave us the lips to determine our attitude. It works like a dashboard signal. When elated, we pointed our lips upward toward Heaven. But when grumpy, we grimace downward and frown in the direction of Hell. That's the magic we exert. So which way is it, friend?

Salem-News.com Community Writer Barry Lee Coyne brings to our readers stories from his combined career of journalism and gerontology, and explains that these paths shaped his values. This writer-therapist often views the world as the masks of comedy and tragedy placed upon the scales of justice. For him, optimism inevitably wins. "Lyrical Lee" has traveled to 30 nations aboard and was once a press intern at the UN. His first published article was in The NY Daily News in '59, dealing with the need for integrity in public office.

He also launched the nation's first tele-conference on health education for shut-ins, created the Eldermentors project in VA to pair retirees with immigrant students needing role models, and was the main catalyst behind CCTV's "Public Public" panel show here in Salem. Lee received his BA in International Relations and an MSW in community organization. He currently serves as a member of Salem's Library Advisory Board. To send Lee an email, please write to this address: To send Lee an email, please write to this address: notcoy@netzero.net