Tag Archives: aging

Loneliness

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Loneliness. . . that feeling of isolation you don’t know how to change. Advice abounds: join a group, call a friend for coffee, get a hobby, and of course, find a purpose. . . but you can’t seem to make yourself do those things. It’s your own fault you feel lonely. You need to shut off the TV, get off the couch, and stare down loneliness. You stay stuck in feelings, not the solution. Solutions are for math class. You long for the ideas of others, their insights about the world. You wish someone would call, but they don’t. You’re so tired of hearing nothing but your own mental chatter.

The surgeon general says we have an epidemic of loneliness, defined as an objective state “of having no one around or of being by oneself for protracted periods of time.” That’s you. In the UK, 49.63% of adults and in the US, one out of two adults report feeling lonely. You’re not alone after all. Half of the world is with you. You tell yourself, “Humans are inherently alone. Everyone knows that.”

 “Maybe I’ll go to the grocery store,” you think—there’s no one to say this aloud to. You don’t need groceries. You don’t really care about cooking and eating except as appeasements to hunger. Regardless of what the Mayo Clinic says about not watching TV when you eat, you do like to sit in front of it and have dinner. Antiques Roadshow, people like you, many are antiques themselves, rooting around in attics hoping for a windfall.

And they talk. “Maybe you should go to the grocery store and get yourself something special for dinner,” that blabbermouth in your head does tend to repeat herself.

You’re a tad ashamed of your self-absorbed loneliness. Look at Helen Mirren. She’s alone and she’s not lonely. She takes responsibility for herself—like you should. She reframes being alone as solitude, and it’s her choice. “Does having a choice make a difference?” you wonder. Mirren notes:

One of the great gifts of growing older is to discover the exquisite art of being alone. What used to be an uncomfortable silence, is now a luxury. The house is peaceful, and I can dance in the kitchen without being judged or just doing nothing. My best company is myself, with a coffee, a good movie and the freedom to be, because solitude is not absence, it is fullness and peace of mind.

You resolve to reframe your loneliness as solitude.

Maybe you could write a journal, like Amy Tan’s The Backyard Bird Chronicles. People would flock to your door. “That probably won’t happen,” your inner voice tells you. “You no longer have a bird feeder.” Sometimes that voice does say something worth listening to.

A few days later it rains. Streaks of water coat the windows, making everything outside blurry. It’s one of those 48° chilling rains. No grocery store visit today. You’re still on a Helen Mirren kick, so you make some tea (which you don’t really like but it works for the Brits), and you decide to reread May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude. Maybe it has some hints for reframing.

Sarton describes solitude as a retreat from the demands of others, a way to find the “rocky depths” of her personality, a chance to do inward work to understand herself.  She argues that we have to make myths of our lives. . . to yield further insight into what it is to be alive, to be a human being. “Maybe I’ll be Emily Dickenson,” you think. Sarton explains:

My experience of great solitude is that its character is unstable—at times exalts and fortifies then soon beats down, and throws one into a starving and thirsty state. (Does that mean you should go to the grocery store?)

You’re more drawn to Sarton’s solitude than Mirren’s, who makes it sound like tea and a biscuit. Sarton sees personal growth in solitude and she doesn’t sugar coat it. Knowing ourselves can be painful, but you’ve always been willing.

That said, you’ve read all of May Sarton’s journals, and you know the truth about her. She maintained a huge correspondence with admirers and entertained a stream of visitors—friends, hired help, and readers—such that she lamented about how tired they made her. Is that really solitude?

The days roll on. You fill out questionnaires in self-help books, hoping to find your purpose. You grocery shop, watching people. You eat dinner and guess the answers for Jeopardy, although you’re not as quick as you used to be—but what 80-year-old knows the names of rap artists anyhow? Finally, it’s bedtime. Two cats vie for a spot on the bed—see, you do have company. You read a self-help book with another one of those questionnaires and then settle in with something entertaining. A whiff of Pranarōm’s Sleep Aid and you’re off to dreamland, full of people and adventures, wild car rides, trips with significant others, not being able to run when you need to, flying (that’s my favorite—wouldn’t you love to fly?). Dreamland. It’s a place where you are never lonely.

Dear Readers.

I am not lonely. I have a passionate engagement with a rosemaling group, volunteer work I love, two writers’ groups, church, friends, and an attentive family. I have, however, had lonely times in my life, so I know what it is like. I worry that our society blames the lonely person, puts it on them to find a way out. So, if you know someone that you suspect is lonely, offer a hand up from that swamp. Call them up. Share your thoughts about something of interest. Connect.

All the lonely people, where do they all come from…

 (Paul McCartney)

Hope – Yet Again

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Photo by Ian Taylor on Unsplash

The older I get, the more I rely on hope.  I last wrote about hope at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, when uncertainty and dread predominated around the world and in me.  I wrote to remind myself that hope is not a gift, but a practice and a ritual, like brushing teeth or lighting candles to signal an occasion. 

But here we are, only five years later, and the world again feels chaotic.  I nurture my shrinking store of hope with a new practice: limiting my morning news consumption to headlines and then moving into meditation.  I rewrite stories of a bleak future by thinking about the promise of a younger person in my life, where younger can mean 50 or 5. I consider, like other friends, leaving my social websites.  Think of the time I will have to read more books! …and call people on the phone.  Every conversation is an opportunity to connect with hope.

However, I can’t avoid everything. I logged in to LinkedIn and confronted a despairing post about the Target corporation’s decision to eliminate its diversity, equity and inclusion office.  Then I remind myself that change is non-linear. A famous quote, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” is often interpreted as a call to patience and perseverance, ignoring MLK’s deep experience with progress and predictable backlash.  If there is progress, it is like a spiral. 

Efforts to label DEI, initiated to redress historical exclusion, as discrimination are jaw-dropping: Should I rail in anguish? Now I can anticipate boycotts of Target as well, all in the name of resisting the threat of oligarchy and a retreat from what seemed like progress in confronting our individual and national shadow selves. 

Getty Images on Unsplash

But does overt resistance bring us hope?  Or, should I be reminded of Arundhati Roy’s profound observation: “the rupture exists….And in the midst of this terrible despair …it is a gateway between one world and the next.”  I need to remain open to alternative stories.

I reconsider a small investigation that I conducted with a group of students years ago, which rewrote our story of failure.  I moved to the University of Minnesota because of a new president who sought to re-energize the role of a state-funded research university, paring away historical artifacts to embrace a more limber capacity to respond to emerging social needs.  The initiative was optimistically titled Commitment to Focus.   Unfortunately, a list of recommendations from a faculty committee included sharing the Veterinary and Dental Schools with an adjoining state.  Between outraged farmers driving their tractors onto an urban campus, and the implacable opposition of the state’s professional associations, Ken Keller was blamed for insensitivity to “real Minnesota” and his position became nonviable in a state where populist legislators wanted to continue every program along with the tradition of accepting most students who could breathe (even though the result was a high rate of failure). 

When my students and I interviewed administrators and faculty a year later to understand the harm done by Keller’s abrupt departure, it became clear that the interim president had adopted his agenda with minor tweaks and a different name.  The subsequent president changed the name again but went forward with the plan (minus visible changes in Dental and Veterinary programs).

Based on this experience, how might we respond when highly publicized diversity, equity and inclusion offices are officially disbanded?  I propose hope, not because corporations (or universities) do the right thing, but because the arc of justice is not embedded in a name, but in actions.

Photo by Austin Kirk at Unsplash

Diversity initiatives have a positive effect on corporate bottom lines — even the ultra-conservative Forbes agrees — and these pre-existed DEI offices. This, has, of course, been the argument in higher ed for decades:  diversity in the opinions, experiences and backgrounds that students and faculty bring with them are the “juice” that stimulates learning and improvement. In other words, universities and corporations have self-interest as well as social commitments to keeping the spiral moving in the direction of diversity.

So, is abandoning a label and office always corrupt or a cop out?  Or is it a story of how resistance can also be a portal, allowing us to see it afresh?  We know that when lofty ideas (like DEI offices) spread rapidly, easy initiatives are adopted more often than challenging efforts.  Low-quality diversity training, on which billions are spent, has limited effects on  the individuals and groups that it is supposed to benefit.  A few universities and corporations have already taken the longer route toward changing the organizational culture to be more welcoming and supportive of difference (which is associated with better decision making and positive organizational outcomes).

If circumstances force people or groups to give up one treasured item or habit, some will quit or sulk.  But many go on and search for replacements, which may involve novel approaches, new ways of thinking.  Will that be the case with Target?  With universities in states where mandates have decimated DEI offices?

It may happen.  It may not.  But it pleases me to think about resistance as subversive innovation…. turning the spiral toward justice.  And I think about my grandchildren, just bursting with ideas and ideals, with confidence – beyond optimism – that their generation will imagine new ways of organizing, working, and changing that will allow them to carry on the family tradition of working at hope. 

Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash

I recently signed up for a woman’s retreat whose aim is “to free us from disillusionment, negativity, lack of imagination, anger, busyness, and more.”  Sounds like just what I need…and I will continue to find those whose opinions I value, to bring curiosity back in – along with hope.

What’s It All About: Just in Time for 2025

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I walk down the hall of my new apartment building. Every doorway looks the same, gray, an apartment number, and a light to the side. Gray stretches indefinitely, soulless. I wonder if someday I’ll get lost in the sameness. I am a small, insignificant, older woman, putting one foot in front of the other in my daily trek to get my mail and newspaper, small things tethering me to the outside world.

          Here it is 2025, and I’m still asking myself what it’s all about. When I was seven or eight, I’d scare myself by worrying that I was an actor in someone else’s dream. I didn’t exist. How could I be sure I existed, that I was real? And if I was real, why did I exist? I had no answer other than to immediately divert my mind and think about the next day when I’d call a friend to play with me.

Then college. I registered for a humanities course, with no idea of what humanities was except a requirement to graduate. In a crowded room in Ford Hall, I learned I wasn’t alone in doubting my existence. A French guy named Descartes asked himself the same question about his dreams and concluded “I think, therefore I am.” Had it been that simple all along, and I was just too young to see it?

Once I established my existence—after all a famous philosopher had confirmed it—I started to focus on why I existed—what was human existence all about?

Next was the 1966 movie, Alfie. I was 23 and about to marry. If you saw the movie, you know that Alfie, played by Michael Caine, is a handsome womanizer, oblivious to the pain he causes the women he “loves” and leaves. One lover has a son, and Alfie becomes a father. Alfie begins to attach emotionally, but then the mother takes the boy away. Alfie denies his loss by finding another woman, who’s married, and he gets her pregnant. She has an illegal abortion with Alfie present. There’s an incredible scene when he views the aborted fetus, and for the first time, Alfie faces his life.

The movie and the finality of the abortion has stuck in my head since 1966. It wasn’t the procedure itself that impressed upon my mind; I understood the woman’s reasons, Rather, it was the contrast between the hedonism that looked so attractive when Alfie lived it, and the woman’s dilemma, a life growing in her, but having that baby meant the possible loss of a husband and family, which, for all its problems was a life of meaning. The theme song still lives in my head, “What’s it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live? . . .” And here I am, 81 years old. I haven’t lived a life of hedonism, that’s probably why I made it to 81. But still I wonder what it is all about, especially as I look back, and realize my moment went by so quickly.

I’m guessing we all wonder what life is about. Having a purpose is touted as one route to an answer—of sorts. I recently heard about a program to inspire disengaged youth by helping them find a purpose. At the other end of the age continuum, we retirees are told that we’ll live longer and be happier if we find a purpose. Maybe we can all hide in our purpose and avoid the deeper question.

Then there’s the path of hedonism. I vividly remember my 50th high school reunion when we went around the room telling each other what we were doing with our lives fifty years after graduation. I was shocked by how many people bragged about their good lives of boating, dining, cocktails, and relaxing in Florida in the winter and Door County during summer (I grew up in Wisconsin). When it was my turn, there I stood, thinking life was about more than that. I stuttered that I was still working (my way of escaping the larger question).

Turning eighty pushed me to answer what it’s all about. It’s scary to me—I want to feel okay with my life because I don’t know what’s coming. I will always hear my mother, dying at 74, saying, “I’m not ready. There are things I need to do.”

A few Christmases ago my children gave me an Aura frame. It’s a tablet that flashes pictures at 15-second intervals. You load the pictures from your phone and other devices onto the tablet. At the time I was disappointed. “What am I going to do with this?” I thought.

Nevertheless, I placed the frame in a central spot, plugged it in, and synched with the Internet. There was my family. They had already loaded their favorite pictures of a growing, changing family of the past 25 years and even pictures from my and their childhoods. Gradually, I added some of my own and Jim’s family added pictures, too. I came to love my Aura. Jim and I would eat dinner at the dining room table and watch the screen, telling stories about the memories triggered by the pictures

Some days life reads like a fine novel. It’s all there: a great plot—my life; characters—family and friends I’ve loved; a climax—the 50’s and 60’s when family and work came to fruition; and now the denouement—old age and me asking once again, What is it all about, after all? It feels pressing, the need to know.

I walk into my apartment from my soulless hall, and there’s the Aura streaming my story line. I pause and watch: Jim, my sisters as children, our dog Eddie, Lake Michigan, my bicycles, our grandchildren, friend and fellow blogger, Karen, vacations, a big snapping turtle, a pileated woodpecker—you get the picture, family, friends, pets, this amazing planet, eighty remarkable years and memories, most everything I’ve loved and love. Aha, this is what it’s all about, I think.

The answer has been there all along, and I can give it to you in one word— love. It’s about love.

. . . for one human being to love another… is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. Rilke

Use It or Lose It?

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Amsterdam 1991

If you’ve followed this blog, you know that bike riding is my happy place. I’ve even posted a collage of some of my bicycles through the years. So, when I moved this summer, I, of course, took my latest bike—a step-through to accommodate my stiffening hip, no more throwing that leg over the seat, or standing on a curb to get on the bike. This new bike was a year old, gave a nice ride, but lacked the cachet of my Bianchi. I locked the it in the parking garage in my new apartment. As I wrapped the kryptonite lock around the bike, I promised it, “Don’t worry, we’ll go out for a spin as soon as I get settled.”

Two weeks later, mid-summer, I went to my parking spot and no bike. Someone had cut the lock and taken it! They also cut off the handlebar bag and threw it on the floor. DARN! That’s not exactly what I said. . . I felt violated. I examined the bikes locked by other parking stalls. Some had three locks, while others had wimpy locks. I had a kryptonite one! It wasn’t fair.

July came and went. I took a wonderful vacation and went to a retreat. In August I started the real work of moving into a new apartment, unpacking boxes and finding places for ten years of stuff.

Meanwhile, the cut cable from my bike lock hung in the garage. Every time I went to drive my car, there it was, a reminder that I had no bike, that I hadn’t been on a bike all summer, and someone had stolen from me. At the same time, I struggled with heavy boxes filled with books, slid furniture into place, and often waited for help. I just wasn’t as strong as I’d been ten years ago, when Jim and I had moved into our house.

That worried me. Would I be as strong on my bike as I’ve been in the past? “Use it or lose it,” came to mind – a saying that any older person can, perhaps reluctantly, recognize as true. I asked myself, “Karen, remember when you dropped cross-legged to the floor to sit? Or lifted that leg over the seat of the bicycle? Remember when you were more powerful than a locomotive and could leap tall buildings in a single bound?” 

“Karen, if you don’t get on a bicycle SOON, you’ll lose that, too—balance, proprioception, agility, quickness.” I set a goal of getting back in that saddle VERY SOON.

But I needed a bicycle.

Then my son-in-law showed up with one, a step through, designed to cruise the neighborhood. He’d bought it to lure my daughter into biking with him— but she detests bicycling, and this bike hung in their garage with the other four that he’s given her through the years. It’s a Townie, made by Electra, with nothing electric about it. Big and bulky, with an ample seat, and high handlebars. This bike was clearly for an older person. A grandma bike. Was he trying to tell me something?

I moved it into my apartment. I wasn’t taking any chances of having it stolen again. There it sits, an old lady bike taunting me. “Slow down, Karen, you can’t get on or off easily. You could fall.”

I wonder just how wise that goal of getting back to riding is. “Practice makes perfect,” I told myself last year when I had a hard time stopping and putting that leg down without pain in my knee and a sense that I might pitch forward. One friend said, “Karen, it’s not if you fall, it’s when you fall.”  Sobering words. But then I heard Karen Rose’s voice: “In the Netherlands, people ride until they die.” So why not me?  And this bike looks a lot like the one I rode in Amsterdam in 1983 (except for the basket…which has negative pizazz). 

Complicating everything is the advice about transitions. “When you leave something behind, that makes space for something new to come in.” Like what? A scooter? Nah, too fast. Tricycle? Heaven forbid, a wheelchair?  And I wonder “Is this true at age 80?” There are lots of losses, family homes, meaningful work, work friends, lifelong friends, spouses, grandchildren who grow up and fly the nest, stuff you treasured but no longer have room for, lifestyles. . . not to mention sitting cross-legged. Or riding a bicycle.

Lots of us are waiting for something new to come in — and getting older in the meantime. And there’s an increasing bond with others who are navigating the territory of aging. At a recent outdoor concert, I sat in a row of six women my age who’d either lost their spouse or were living with one who was ailing. Our conversations reflected our age: “Don’t put your chair there, it’ll tip and you don’t want to fall;” “I brought some grapes so we don’t have to eat that salty fatty food they’re selling;” “I have to leave by nine, I don’t like to drive when it gets dark.” That’s bonding—we’re in the same tippy boat, waiting for something new to flow in on the next tide.

Where does that leave me? I haven’t given up the dream—another happy place has to be out there. I could always buy a new bicycle, maybe an electric one or definitely one with some zip.  Or maybe I could learn to accept a free granny bicycle.  For the time being, though, I’ve found another happy place, my new deck and coffee with a piece of almond bread from the Black Walnut Bakery. For now, happy is right here.