“It is impossible to live the evening of life according to the same programs we follow during the morning.”
Let’s face it “We are all terrified of getting older”.
But the solution is not to hide our heads like an ostrich.
We must anticipate problems.
- Watch your diet.
- Exercise.
- Save for retirement.
But we must not neglect our mental health.
We have to prepare ourselves psychologically to grow old with a healthy mind.
And who better to teach us how to do it than one of the most brilliant psychologists of all time, Carl Gustav Jung, who lived to be 86?
So pay attention to these three lessons from Jung on aging (your future even if you don’t want to think about it),
Let’s start.
“Not to grow old is as stupid as not being able to grow out of childhood.” — Carl Gustav Jung
People don’t want to grow old for three reasons,
- They are terrified of too much free time: the problem is that when you have too much free time, you get to “be” more than “do,” which can be unsettling when you have spent the last decades of life producing without time to be yourself.
- Decreasing recognition: When the productive period ends, it is others who take the credit for the work, which is logical, because they are the ones who take our place when we retire. The same thing happens personally; children grow up, and as Nora Ephron would say, “When children reach adolescence, it is important to have a dog so that someone at home is happy to see you.” 🙂
- The feeling of being a burden: when our productive period ends, we realize that what sustained our self-esteem — social status and professional career — no longer exists, leading us headlong into existential emptiness.
Solution: beyond the cultivation of free time to disconnect and return to work fresh and productive, we have to spend that time in introspection, in the search for the self, to discover that there is an intrinsic dignity to human nature, and this is enough to sustain our self-esteem when the rest of the things on which we base our identity — work, job role, family role — change or cease.
As Jung says, not to do so is “As stupid as not being able to leave childhood.”
Lesson: you have to close stages and start others. You must base your self-esteem on your value as a human being, not just your professional matter.
“The mature person needs to increase his culture.”- Carl Gustav Jung.
There is a tendency to postpone pleasure to achieve more and more professional success.
But this attitude can atrophy the capacity for enjoyment by delaying much-needed gratification.
We must find a balance, or else when we have nothing to do for various reasons — layoffs, vacations, retirement, illness — we will be struck by existential emptiness, and we will become so deeply depressed that we will wish we had cultivated the beautiful art of enjoying a well-deserved reward from time to time.
And that reward is our culture: what makes us genuinely happy, even if it seems useless to us: our hobbies.
As an ancient Eastern sage said, “Everyone talks about the usefulness of the useful, but they forget the importance of the usefulness of the useless.”
And that which you are passionate about, even if it has no apparent utility, keeps you sane, and that is very useful, especially as you get older.
Lesson: The ability to enjoy is like a muscle; when you reach a certain age, you lose it if you don’t train it. Do things that you want yourself, and forget the collective tastes.
“It is impossible to live the evening of life according to the same programs we follow during the morning; the truth of the morning will be the error of the evening.” — Carl Gustav Jung.
Hyper-specialization benefits you (in the morning of your life). Still, when your work activity ceases (in the afternoon), it disables you from proper integration in an increasingly diverse and globalized society.
And if you have not developed other skills besides the main one — the one that feeds you — it will be much more challenging to create them in that dreamed future in which you have finally retired.
Don’t be self-deceived,
- “I like to paint; I’ll learn when I retire.”
- “I’ve always wanted to study history and philosophy; I’ll sign up when I retire.”
- “I’ve always wanted to learn languages; I’ll start when I retire”.
Even if possible, remember that your brain is not as receptive at 20 as it is at 40, nor at 50 as it is at 70.
You have to lay the groundwork for what you want to do when you have free time long before you have that free time. Reread it.
Lesson: there are skills that, if you don’t unlock today, you will never enjoy them. Whatever you intend to enjoy tomorrow, you have to plant it today. Don’t forget it.
A virtual hug
AG
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