Emotional Feelings with Age
As unique individuals from birth, our given/acquired emotional states are not going to age the same way. The goal here is an attempt to perhaps identify some general trends on our emotional state with aging, while granting many exceptions to any generalizations. Plus, to the extent we can control our emotional state with aging, what should we be attempting in this regard?
For a start some people are quite lost after retiring, find themselves bored, or simply miss being ‘important’ in ways they once were. In most cases, if the truth be known, more and more people were considering them less important on the job as they aged. The younger simply learn to work around aged relics in the workplace. This is less necessary these days since with the new ‘Goddess’, Bottom Line, aging employed workers, in any capacity, are often traded in for newer models who cost less salary-wise.
In general, our emotional states are less intense as we age, we go to the extremes in our emotions less and less. Part of it may be we have been there, done that, know where it is all going. Then again, there is nothing new in our aged emotional repertoire, so it is not like when we were in our formative years and were experiencing these kind of emotions the first time. Sometimes I look at young people and wish I could get as excited about something as they do about so many things. But of course, with age, that is not going to happen. A lot of things we focus on when younger and are entirely normal, like material things, power, influence, control, love, competitive winning, outsmarting others and situations, excitement, stress, and so on create our emotional state. None of these agendas are evil in themselves, but only if we eventually are unable to accept when ‘enough is enough’. All of these things can become compulsive behaviors, and no compulsive behaviors can bring real contentment.
To the extent we see so many of these things to be important in our terminational years, we suffer the consequences of disappointment, frustration, and helplessness. I always am amused by athletes, who expended so much effort, for so long, during the season. to win a championship, with all the stress that comes with such a feat—to hear them scream “I am going to disneyland!!!!.” Hey, for me, after that kind of effort, stress, and being in the public eye, I would choose some quiet nature setting to cool down and relax, in a setting where there would be no stress whatsoever. I suspect these high profile athletes have achieved enough excitement for the year.
It is kind of that way after retirement for many people whose jobs were filled with daily unpredictable stresses and issues. When people advise me to do some exciting things in my terminational years I just smile, and inform them that I don’t need anymore excitement, challenges, to win any contests, to out maneuver anyone, to acquire more THINGS, etc, I just look forward to some peace, quietude, and opportunity—with decent health—to sit back and enjoy the simpler things in life. Those older people who are a bundle of nerves, flailing away at endless windmills, trying still to be the decider in other people’s lives, fussing about nothing-burgers, demanding continued involvement in other people’s lives, are missing the point of retirement. Let those in their productive years do their thing, those in their productive years are supposed to be in charge now, and the rest of us have this wonderful seat in the audience to enjoy the theatre of it all. I remember being at a meeting some time ago and someone asked what I thought since I have been around in life for some time. I replied, “I think my days are numbered and thus the consequences of anything being discussed here are not likely to impact me for long, if at all. So think it through the best you can and good luck.”
If we are lucky enough to reach our terminational years with good health, then we need to have developed our level of tolerance to diversity in such a way that we understand the function of diversity in the evolutionary process, and the need for change as the tool for progress. The world is not full of evil and good, governed by some sort of sadistic demanding temperamental God who provides His protection to those who inherited some human devised religious dogmas. Instead, the laws which control the evolutionary process seem to apply to everyone, and were devised to ensure progress over evolutionary time, not necessarily during our minuscule time——human time.
All of us need be careful about this phrase ’sanctity of life’ which is often combined with ‘family values’. These are not realistic perceptions at all. While the laws which govern the evolutionary process are beyond amazing, and are complex, they are not built around any sanctity of individual life or lend any protection to any family over another. It is a psychological mistake to start viewing ourselves, or our ‘family’ (however extended), as special in the scheme of things. We do this out of pure self serving needs. To reach any true inner peace, one that is compatible with the genetic nature of ethics in our species, we have to accept the Golden Rule, and accept that others count as much as ourselves, and that we all have, individually and collectively, the obligation to make a more level playing field for those less fortunate genetically or environmentally. ‘Survival of the fittest’, however hard we may try to sugarcoat the process, is inherently cruel when it comes to individual members of a species, and can be cruel to even the best individual members of any species. Very bad things can happen to the best and very lucky good things to the worst in any species.
Humans have an ethical nature in part because we understand the concept of death and the consequences of injury, disease, accidents, etc. Much of the pain we suffer from physical injury or disease is our realization of the consequences. A while back I was present when a horse got kicked by another horse when they were frolicking, and one horse got a fractured bone in a front leg. The horse could hardly move but was as stoic about it as could be, while those humans closely associated with that horse were overcome with tears and anguish. The horse only knew it was hurt, had felt physical hurt before, and things were done to heal the hurt. The horse had no idea the end was but a few hours away. That is why the human species requires an ethical nature, a means to bring some contentment to the less fortunate. There is no way a Donald Trump will ever have any peace of mind, any contentment in his life. He has this addiction, this compulsive behavior to acquire more and more material things, money, and power which comes from these kind of acquisitions. Enough is never enough and to reach the same high as before there has to be more and more of all this. His happiness is of a fleeting nature and is always followed by emotional lows which go lower each time as his efforts to get another equal high must be even greater. We all know far less fortunate people in life with more contentment and real joys in life than a Donald Trump.
Once adapted to the terminational years as a spectator in this theatre of life being run by those in their productive years, what does this mean for our emotional state? Well, like any theatre performance, we are put through varied emotional states. When we see good things happen to good people we become emotionally pleased—after all, we have been there and know how good it feels to have something good happen to someone in need. With todays plethora of internet video snips we get to see some really happy, sad, cruel, amazing, depressing real life theatre things. And our emotions follow. I, for example, for varied reasons, choose not to participate in a lot of social things anymore, but there are those who do, and it makes me happy see them continue enjoying such social situations. So in this sense, our emotions in our terminational years can run the full spectrum many times in a day, the difference being it is not so much about our own lives anymore. That can be a good thing since when we are the center of the situation, especially difficult situations, the emotion may be too stressful or linger too long, or never get resolved. Sometimes people comment on how cheerful I tend to be all the time. Part of that is because I don’t have any real reason any more to be un-cheerful. I am not arguing with anybody about anything that is personal, I am not competing with anyone about anything, I feel no need to manipulate others to achieve some sort of outcome, I am not looking over my shoulder to see if anyone is gaining on me regarding work, social adventures, family matters, etc. There is a time and need for all that, especially during our formative and productive years, but when the ‘race’ of life is over, the time is ripe for some peace, tranquility, and contemplation.
The point is this: we cannot depend on self serving goals in life alone to achieve contentment. Age, if we are healthy, gives us the chance to let go of compulsive behaviors that were appropriate in our productive years, and begin to appreciate the simpler things in life along with sharing any of our material gain, and/or our time, with the less fortunate. Being the center of attention, for whatever reasons, is not something that wears well with age. Trying to relive the past never works. Trying to stay important in the same way we were once important will fail. As more and more of our past slips away including parents, former friends, former activities etc, we have little left but gratitude for any good luck we have had, special talents or abilities we had, and a real sense of appreciation for those people in our lives who helped us along the way. What is often left for us in the terminational years is the chance to finally appreciate the simpler things in life, the sereneness of solitude, and the peace that comes with having run the race of life well enough to have gotten to the finish line of our productive years exhausted, but healthy. Our race is over, we really did achieve some successes, and now we get to genuinely relax, put the pieces of life together which we have accumulated along the way, and finally, to varying degrees, be able to see the forest of life instead of individual trees. When we are in our productive years there are so many things we HAVE TO DO as part of our paid job duties. When we retire we are free, for the most part, to do what we want, when we want, as often as we want. That is a good deal The total picture is uplifting and full of hope, not for us as individuals, but for this evolutionary process to which we have been fortunate to be a part. If we can only be happy when we ourselves play a major role in the process, and be some sort of protected and favored special person protected by God, destined to be forgiven for all our sins and enter some sort of Heaven after death—-if this is the prerequisite for being happy, then the terminational years are going to be a bumpy road. Heaven or no Heaven is not something we, as humans, can remotely conclude much of anything. We cannot comprehend how this thing called life really began, with something coming from nothing. Why would we remotely think we can therefore comprehend what the future is like? All of us missed most of life in evolution and we don’t seem depressed over that. Why would we be depressed over the very real possibility we are going to miss life in the evolutionary process after we die? Way back in time, in early Greek society, Epictetus (a Greek philosopher) made the following astute observation: “Thus that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist.”
In the last analysis that is fair enough. We need not worry. Things are moving along as they should. There is no reason to think the evolutionary progress is coming to any end. It is a vast relay race, and we will, like others before us, hand off the baton to the next generation. It is a good thing that we have aged, as it seems to be the only way to live a long time. And with good health, we have the best seats to watch the greatest show, called life, as pure theatre.
