Hi Gay and all, A number of the older adults with whom I work are actively facing or have already faced these issues. Most, when they are not confronted with some facts, will choose housing options that involve specialized elder communities or moves away from networks of family and friends to rely too much on one important relationship. While choices for specialized communities or a close relative can be quite good, they are generally more isolating (from pre-existing relationship networks) and dependency provoking than they need to be. All that I have read and seen indicates that the physical setting for aging well is less important than the density of meaningful relationships. This frames the sustainability question more as a matter of maintaining, transforming and building relationships than focusing on the built environment. Within that constraint, there are choices about the built environment that become more or less "sustainable".
If the goals of older folks are to live as fully and as independently as possible, they may need the challenge of stairs, walking, driving as long as it is safe, living with annoying neighbors, family members and friends, as well as some accommodations for accessibility and some skills at dealing with fundamental conflict with adult children, grandchildren and friends. The easier path for aging is often not the more satisfying path. Most people I work with are capable of adding to and re-shaping their networks of friends and significant relationships well into their 70s and 80s, even when they initially don't believe they can. Very few are able to keep up with the many relationship changes, or find them meaningful in their 90s, and by that time almost all of their significant lifelong peers will be gone, and their lives will be lived with people more strange than familiar to them. While there are many environmental and behavioral approaches to staving off memory loss, memory loss will eventually happen, if you live long enough. Cultivating contradictory skills is critical--both the skills to make the choices that slow memory loss and the skills to be open to accepting memory loss and find a way to live joyfully with it. Doing both types of things make people feel and know that they are taking care of themselves, even while they cannot provide all care for themselves. The experience of life of changes becomes both easier and more meaningful. The measure of a life's worth is not how much we are independent or dependent, but rather the grace with which we give what we can to one another and take what we need. This is hard for people to learn. Yet even those most fiercely independent, or those most wanting to slip into dependency, can find a way that is more satisfying, and a life that is more complex and rich than they might have imagined if confronted, and I mean confronted, with what they have not thought about doing or becoming. >From what I have read and seen, planning for a "sustainable" older adulthood really needs to begin at about age 50, and be significantly in place by age 60. Most people don't think about starting until they are close to 60. That is sad, but we can't really address what does not matter to us, until it finally does matter. I am 50 years old. I have made changes, and am making changes, to my house in Fall Creek that will make it a place that I should be able to thrive in until I am 100 years old, if I should live that long. But if it does not work out, I will be prepared to struggle through alternatives. The man who built the house that I own and have renovated, built it in 1913 and lived in it until he died at age 100, in 1970. My former neighbor to the north built his house in 1950 and died there in 2002. Now his son and family live there. And the man who lives in the house to the south of me was born in the southeast bedroom of that very house 92 years ago. He intends to die in the northeast bedroom of that same house, someday. There are many, many ways to age well. Recognizing that there are many choices, and that very rarely only one is optimal into a future we cannot fully predict, helps people to make hard choices as well as to not force choices before they make sense. What is most critical is that older folks fully believe in the value of the search for a good way to live as much as a good place to live. "Making do" with what one can figure out often leads to a little more optimism and more resilience in coping with both the welcome surprises and serious disappointments that come. "Being resigned" to no good alternatives often leads to or continues a life where one perceives oneself has powerless or a victim, whether or not this may be true. "Demanding care" without regard to one's material resources, or the strain on relationships with family or friends may lead a whole community on a painful search for what is not possible that feels dictatorial and at times abusive. In as much as those of us who are not so old are involved in the lives of those who are older, the most we can offer to sustainable living is an open-ended commitment to be friends and companions on the journey, offering our direct, and imperfect insight and resources to live into a future that none of us can really accurately predict. I have many, many specific ideas, but they are probably best shared directly. Eric Eric Clay, M.Div., Ph.D. Community Coach Shared Journeys, Inc. 832 North Aurora Street Ithaca, NY 14850 607-592-6874_ [EMAIL PROTECTED] (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Shared Journeys: Make a World of Difference Our mission is to help individuals, families, organizations and communities care more effectively for themselves and others who are not like them. **************It's only a deal if it's where you want to go. Find your travel deal here. (http://information.travel.aol.com/deals?ncid=aoltrv00050000000047) _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
