Humility or Humiliation in aging, its your choice.

It is personal when it happens to you. As much as we talk about changes in older age, it remains at a distance, until it happens to you. Most of the time the loss of function happens fast and we are unprepared. While most of us might recover from an initial loss, we only have to face another different one shortly thereafter. Little pieces of you are taken away. And our mind does not deal well with these losses. You did not plan for it, and even if you thought of this eventuality, when it happens to you it is different. It is personal and real.

We have a model of the world in our brain. Within this perfect heaven there is our avatar, an image of us, who we think we are. As we get older and frailer—usually these come together—the reality conflicts with the avatar that we have built.  This model is important for us. Most of the time the model of the world and the avatar representing us functions well. We function on a daily basis without needing to be aware of this model. We behave in automatic mode most of the time. Until something goes wrong and the avatar can no longer do what its suppose to do.  The mental narrative that we have taken so long to build up suddenly needs to be re-arranged and re-modeled.

In aging, not long after the first of such redefinition of our model—perhaps we realize that we cannot read small print anymore without using prescription glasses—then comes another onslaught of loss. The constant change and attrition, requires us to be repetitively modify our model and our avatar. Aging is an existential danger to our model, because it threatens how that model is suppose to function. Making these changes is difficult for everyone since our model resists change, as it has been a faithful portrayal of our reality for so long. The older we get the more entrenched this model becomes. It is also doubly difficult in older age because there is so much variance among our peers. We delude ourselves that perhaps these attritions are only temporary and therefore we do not need to change our avatar just yet. There is always a lag in how old we are in reality and how old we see ourselves—a subjective age bias. Of course we are biased to see ourselves younger.

Many theories exist for why we underestimate our age. Overestimating our abilities, our looks, how satisfied we are in life, and aligning our personality, attitude, behavior and interests with that of a much younger person. Some theories also suggest that there is an internal bias to be young. But these theories assume that there is a conscious, if not willful desire to stay young. Although all these theories are valid, but there could be a simpler answer. There could be a lag, a time difference, between reality and how our model represents it. It takes time for us to reconcile reality. And the process is dynamic and we are continuously fighting this change. This dynamic process has not gone unnoticed.

In psychology by the 1950, Erik Erikson developed the first personality theory that included older adults. Before then most theories stopped at young adults. Erikson’s eight-stages of development comes closest to explaining this constant fight we experience in older ages. Likely written by his wife Joan Erikson, the final stage of development emerging late after age 65 years. This stage contests that there is a fork in the road. At this fork which Erikson called “crisis,” we either go towards ego integrity or we go headlong into despair. As dramatic as this crisis seems, it is emerging that such depictions are very close to the experience of aging.

By ego integrity Erikson means that we come to accept who we are. That we only have this life to live, and that we need to resolve issues in order for us to be able to be comfortable with where we are. Although seemingly diametrically apposed (ego versus non-ego) Lawrence Kohlberg’s 1973 theory of moral development later expanded to address older adults, included a stage of self-transcendence a “...contemplative experience of the nonegoistic or nonindividual variety” (p.500-501). Ego integration and non-ego seem to refer to the same concept, that of humility. The only salvation to older adults is becoming humble. John Cottingham in 2009 defines humility is, “ ... a lack of anxious concern to insist on matters of status, a recognition that one is but one among many others, and that one’s gifts, if such they be, are not ultimately of one’s own making” (p.153).

The alternate to humility is pride, when we are constantly fighting unresolved issues that continue to fester and create discord in our life. Later on Joan Erikson formulated a ninth stage of very old age that starts in the eighties when physical health begins to deteriorate and death becomes more real. She recognized at this stage that society similarly ups the ante, “aged individuals are often ostracized, neglected, and overlooked; elders are seen no longer as bearers of wisdom but as embodiments of shame” (p. 144). It seems that unless we subjugate ourselves to humility the alternate is humiliation.

That is why it is personal. Its not just about accepting aging, its that we have no choice. We either suck it up and become humble or fight it and face a certain humiliation. By sucking it up we acknowledge our mortality and therefore impermanence, our humility. If we fight it we rally our pride and confront these changes with certain outcome, failure and humiliation. Science tends to support this view. Neal Krause and David Hayward with the University of Michigan wrote that when it comes to humility, people that live the longest are the ones that accept where they are in life. By become less of ourselves (ego-less) nature rewards us with more of ourselves (long life.)

Someone has a dark sense of humor, and I hope that I live long enough to  learn to appreciate it.

© USA Copyrighted 2018 Mario D. Garrett

References

Cottingham, J. (2009). Why believe?. New York: Continuum. Erikson, E. H. (1956). The problem of ego identity. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 4(1), 56-121.

Kohlberg, L. (1973). Stages and aging in moral development—some explanations. The Gerontologist, 13, 497–502.

Krause, N., & Hayward, R. D. (2012). Humility, lifetime trauma, and change in religious doubt among older adults. Journal of Religion and Health, 51(4), 1002-1016.

Teuscher, U. (2009). Subjective age bias: A motivational and information processing approach. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 33(1), 22-31.