Havin' fun!
Most of us are in no hurry to die. Nevertheless, aging brings with it unmistakable signs that the body is running down. We joke about it, make some effort to hold it off, and often try not to think about it. No doubt about it, those little aches and pains are annoying, but there is something far worse.
What’s worse is dying mentally in a living body. It happens in far too many aging folks, and it just isn’t necessary. Depression is a prevalent condition among senior citizens and it is often caused by the realization that we have stopped growing intellectually or emotionally, or that aging is accompanied by growing fears that keep us isolated and upset.
Change is one of the things that upsets us and causes fear. We tend to be afraid that the physical and mental resources we have relied on to cope with change will fail us as we grow older. For some of us, the easiest way to avoid that fear is to avoid change. This avoidance, however, leads us into one of those dreaded “self-fulfilling prophecies.” The more we avoid change, the less we experience success. This convinces us that our fears are justified, so we practice avoidance more and more as we grow older.
Modern technology is one of those areas that produces enormous changes; changes that we have to work hard to ignore. Many of us have convinced ourselves that we don’t like or need technology, as a means of rationalizing our avoidance of it. This is unfortunate for seniors because we stand to benefit from adopting technology as much or more than any other group of people. I might even say that many of the only opportunities we have to enjoy great quality of life as we get older is to extend our physical, mental and emotional health through technology.
It is common to find folks of my generation who have long since given up on using computers because they found them too complex and too technical to use when they first arrived on the scene in the 70’s and 80’s. They decided that they could never learn to use the infernal machines so they stopped trying, thus setting up one of those “self-fufilling prophecies.” We were also taught that the benefits from using a tool were directly proportional to the cost and effort expended to use it. Normally that is a reasonable presumption. In the case of computers, though, it is quite the opposite. Computers become more beneficial, easier to use, and less expensive with every passing day. If you last tried using a computer more than a couple of years ago, you don’t really know what the experience can be like.
Then there is the conventional wisdom that “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” In aging that idea takes the form that we are born with all the brain cells we will ever have and they start dying at birth. We now know that is a memory myth! The brain is capable of renewing itself and staying healthy far into the end of our natural days. In fact, using new technologies is one of the most effective ways to maintain good brain health!
These are some of the reasons that the primary goal of this column is to persuade seniors to take advantage of technology, and to help them to do so. If you think that reading it would be a waste of your time, you’re not only wrong, you are as the old cowboy said, “Dead wrong.” Nothing you could do as a senior citizen could be more exciting, rewarding and time- and effort-effective than learning to use technology. It can keep you mentally alive and growing no matter what your body is doing! Stay tuned!
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