Ageing Series - Perspective
How do you know if an action you have taken has been right, useful, beneficial, or the opposite? By the result. You perform an action that you think will be helpful, but you don’t really know that it is helpful until you see the result of that action. Maybe you think giving your friend some money was a nice thing to do, but then you saw them spend it on something that was harmful to them. So, maybe your action wasn’t particularly good after all. What guides our guesses at what will be a good action to take, is our experience, our values and our meaning in life. If we hold the value of honesty and, when we have been honest things have worked out well, we will guess being honest is always the best course of action.
However, when your actions accumulate and their results are seen not only in minutes, but in months and years and decades, how can we measure if they have been good or not? The answer is that we constantly re-evaluate them overtime, as we age and gain a new perspective on them. This is where meaning comes in. As children we always have a guess at our meaning in life; to save lives, to be a rockstar, to fight in wars etc. As we get older, our perceived meaning in life becomes more nuanced, more complex and realistic. For many, we lose the concept of meaning altogether, and see life as meaningless – a path of which can lead to nihilism and hedonism. However, in my experience of counselling those who are of an elderly age, this idea of meaning often comes back and can dominate their thoughts. What was my meaning in life? What was my purpose? What have I done with my life? These are questions that one inevitably considers, as the end of their life is looming ever closer.
It seems to me that our meaning in life, is not created or decided upon, but discovered. It is as if our meaning is innate, predetermined, and we can either discover it through our passions and motivations, or suppress it through what we think our meaning ought to be. Perhaps, for example, being a carer has always enticed you, due to the joy and feeling of duty it brings. Spending your life in the caring profession may not bring you much money, but it has allowed you to embrace your perceived meaning. When, looking back on such a life in old age, you may rest easy considering you’re meaning in life was probably to care for those who need support. However, let’s say you were pushed, instead, into a more lucrative career that you didn’t enjoy – how then will you review your life at its end? Your meaning may not just be career based, but may be focused on family, friends, hobbies and passions. But it can only be truly known and evaluated, with the perspective gained from its end point.
So, perhaps, a good way of viewing our actions, decisions, interactions, time-spent and so on, is through this perceived perspective. All these things add up to create a life that can only be evaluated at its end. So, live in such a way, that at its end you can say you lived well, you are happy with the life you experienced. In this way, it is likely the end will be much easier to accept. Possibly, it may even feel like a good place to stop.