“I WANT TO BE a worker man,” my grandson told me when he was 3. And as far as we were both concerned, the next day he was a worker man, hammering and sawing and carrying wood from one part of the yard to another.
As I watched our toddler, I thought about my friend Brad’s father, suffering from Alzheimers, who dutifully and with pride carried wood back and forth, again and again, from a spot near the barn to the place it came from. As observers, we see the young boy’s work as cheerful and promising and the old man’s as sad, even pathetic, given that he was once an engineer who played cello.
But from another perspective, both my grandson and Brad’s father were both happily employed worker men, with plans and a job to be done. Reading the New York Times column of 01/06/22, which tries to describe the activities of the aging in terms sensible and familiar to the journalist, I think he got it wrong — wrong, at least, from the perspective of someone who now must consider herself old. The author’s mistake, I think, was valuing activity from a middle-aged point of view. The goals of the aging people that he chose to describe — to see grandchildren at the holidays, to get to Atlantic City, to make it to the next birthday — were somewhere between time markers and platitudes.
Truth be told, I am not very goal-directed these days. Happily, I am busy in much the same way I felt busy in college — go to class, do some research, meet with a friend, plan a party, enjoy a cup of tea, take a walk, get stoned, listen to music. Like my grandson’s or Brad’s father work, my efforts and activities are satisfying. I sometimes wish that my research was less of the “What ever happened to XXX?” variety, but then I think back to what a teacher friend used to tell his fifth graders, “The best questions are your own questions.”
And I still write. It’s neither for remuneration nor publication as in times past, but writing makes me feel more like the kind of person I want to be, more like myself. I am thinking about my grandson and Brad’s dad, and even Sisyphus who works to keep his stone from rolling backwards. From each we learn something important about goals. I think it’s best to imagine each of us in okay health as busy and engaged, if not happy, as we move through the day.
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Wendy Saul is a retired professor of education and co-author of Thinking Like a Generalist: Skills for Navigating a Complex World.
I so much like the concept of doing things that make you feel like yourself. I’ve been trying to write (I mean trying for years) about what “me” time means. I have very little patience with the concept as generally presented; I’m more likely to think of writing postcards to voters as “me” time - that is, me *doing* me rather than me *doing for* me. Maybe I’ll get there some day, but probably I’m too lazy to keep trying.
Love this. Aging is difficult. It seems to me first the recognition and mourning that this too will happen to me. Then it is what we make it if we are able. Your father in law reminds me of my friends father who ended up in a home for those with Alzheimer's Ds. He was lost and angry and violent if an aide came into his room, as he felt he was protecting his home. But once they worked with him and he got the job of cleaning the dinning room up sweeping and such he was a happy worker! (as long as no one touched to moved his cleaning utensils (broom etc). He enjoyed life as much as anyone can with that disease. He had a job a purpose! Whether we do "enjoyable things", or have a job.