Part IV: We're Too Old Not to Recognize These Feelings: Here's How to Deal With Them

Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society JULIA HUBBEL

Photo by Trung Thanh on Unsplsh

The One Thing You Aren't Doing Enough Of and What To Do About It

“Wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born.”

-Matthew Arnold, Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse

Okay, so that’s a little clickbait-y, but there’s probably a lot of truth to it.

This article delves into the one thing that you and I and everyone else can do which will, guaranteed, no kidding, make the entire Transitions process better.

Ironclad.

You may be doing some of it. You need to do more, as do we all, especially right now.

The single most important thing you and I need to do when faced with Endings, the subsequent losses and all the heartbreak that goes with them, and the crazy-making days, months, years of The Neutral Zone is

Reach out, connect, talk to people. Make new friends, reach out to old ones.

STOP HIDING.

I couldn’t be more serious. This isn’t just a tactic or strategy for navigating your way successfully through Change and Transition. Frankly, it’s the ONLY guaranteed way to do it successfully. To do life successfully, which many of us are not doing.

You’ll forgive me for stating the obvious.

Something is always changing. We are always and forever being forced to deal with our losses and then being shoved unceremoniously into The Neutral Zone.

Our compulsion is to go hide and let our screens suck out our eyeballs. I’ve done it. Doesn’t work.

A feeling exacerbated to the nth degree by social media and influencers is that everyone else is doing fine and I am doing for shit.

This is what isolation does. We believe the lies we tell ourselves. The lies that social media, fake influencers, politicians and our inner demons tell us.

Isolation kills.

From the above link:

The study… tracked people for more than a decade and collected loneliness data before the Covid-19 pandemic. It adds to increasing evidence that loneliness can be bad for our health, contributing to health problems including anxiety, heart disease and dementia.

It can even increase the likelihood of Parkinson’s disease.

Not only does it kill, it kills all the possibilities for new ideas, a shoulder to lean on, cry on and get hugged by.

Isolation not only increases the potential for deadly disease, it prevents us from finding out that we are all in the same boat in some way.

In February, The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson published this powerful article about our isolationist century.

Thompson writes:

Self-imposed solitude might just be the most important social fact of the 21st century in America.

We were already isolating, thanks to social media and other changes. Covid, however, put those changes on steroids, and caused permanent rifts in our society which we are still trying to understand.

Coming out of Covid, we had all these schisms drawn by opposing sides. We stopped talking to people whose ideas weren’t perfectly in line with our own, we most assuredly wouldn’t tolerate gathering with them, say, at church, where tolerance used to be taught.

I may be wrong here but I think the Bible teaches something about loving one’s neighbor. At the risk of pissing off all the hate-mongering Christians, this article is from the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism.

I most assuredly don’t have to be a practicing Christian to agree with the sentiments which encourage forgiveness, patience, understanding and love for people we see as our enemies, no matter what.

We could all use more of that, rather than the white-hot hatred pouring out of so many churches these days in the name of what more than a few folks have called the Prince of Peace. The role of compassion and empathy, which are transformative human emotions, is being mocked by right wing conservatives.

Staying in close touch with people whose beliefs and voting choices do not agree with my own is an act of resistance these days. It’s also seen as “loving the fascists” by some readers (who have been blocked).

I learn nothing by isolating myself. I learn a great deal by listening and caring. They are not my enemies; they are part of a circle of people I care very much about. Hardline stances only make our world smaller.

Besides, there are millions of us in the middle who support things like abortion, LGBTQ++ rights and far more who share a lot of stances but whose ideologies may differ. We lost what we agree on, which is a great deal. That creates safety when we remind ourselves of how alike our societal concerns are.

Now. Would I allow a Christofascist into my circle? No. There would be no room for me. Therein lies the problem of extremism on either side.

But I will not isolate. During Covid I made a point out of starting up casual conversations with people in lines. I made them laugh by telling them a self-deprecating story. That made them look up from their phones.

Kind-hearted laughter is a signal of safety. I practiced it regularly. It really does make a difference and it builds your skills at creating connections.

We desperately need them right now.

Photo by Christopher Johnson on Unsplash

My friend Melissa, who lost the love of her life, her beloved dog and her job all in just the last six months, said this morning,

“I am frantic to make sense of anything right now.”

I don’t know anyone with a brain and a heart who doesn’t feel exactly that way. It’s just one of the reasons we talk daily. It’s also a sign of just how disorienting big changes are, and the transitions which follow.

We feel frantic when Endings slam us, we feel more frantic when we are shoved into The Neutral Zone naked and fearful.

We are rats in Skinner’s box, constantly getting shocked every time we look at our screens.

Figure 1: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ahmad FB, Cisewski JA, Rossen LM, Sutton P. Provisional drug overdose death counts. National Center for Health Statistics. 2022.

Alcohol use spiked, especially among women, during Covid.

When we feel frantic and isolate, that’s a recipe for disaster. Too many of us self-medicate to deal with loneliness and desperation.

Too many of us get sucked into conspiracy theories. Too many of us see the whole world as The Enemy, and the only “friends” are other equally-terrified and suspicious people online.

We need each other. Especially right now. The casual conversation that skews into the very real? That can be a life-changing moment because you feel heard.

Other people are feeling exactly the same way you are. Suddenly the changing world doesn’t feel so frightening.

Of course, if you choose to hang out with uber-frantic people and the only outcome is that you commiserate and come away feeling even more frantic, perhaps you need to rethink your strategy.

That’s why these Bernie and AOC demonstrations swell to tens of thousands. Folks frantic for a reason to hope show up and realize that they are in excellent company times many, many thousands of people.

As a nation we’ve stopped going to church.

While I’m not a believer, I miss the rituals that I grew up with going to parochial school. I don’t have to know my catechism to appreciate the grounding nature of gathering with others, singing, meeting afterwards and discussing life. Rituals are grounding, and allow us to feel connected.

This excellent article addresses what has happened to us, and let’s disregard the extreme evangelicals and Christofacists here, when we exorcise the sacred from our lives.

From that piece:

Besides the rise in white middle-aged mortality, the other urgent well-being crisis in America today is the spike in mental health problems among adolescents and young adults. Here, too, the effects of the disintegration of religious life can be seen, as recent studies find that religious participation reduces the risk of depression in young people.

The story I’ve told so far sounds a theme already familiar in this series – namely, that good things can have bad consequences. Here it’s the combination of science, capitalism, and the welfare state, which, despite all they have done to uplift lives and expand possibilities, have also had a dispiriting side effect. By reducing the salience of the sacred in a world of artifice and rational explanation, and by relieving organized religion of many of its practical, worldly functions, they have led us away from that regular, shared experience of the sacred upon which flourishing communities and flourishing individual lives depend. (author bolded)

Am I telling you to go back to church? Not necessarily.

I am inviting you to inquire into what’s missing. For the sense of the sacred, that grace is possible no matter the circumstances, is a powerful feeling of hope. Embedded in most religious practices is indeed that hope remains.

Hope happens when we gather.

When we’re frantic, which is daily life right now even worse than under Covid, we need hope. We get hope from each other.

We are immersed in a culture that romanticizes the individual. That is more costly that any of us can possibly imagine, being lived out right here, right now, with our loneliness epidemic. Here’s what author Brink Lindsey has to say from the article above:

What romantic individualism misses is that society precedes the individual and constitutes the individual: we are all born into a pre-existing world we did not make and come bearing a whole array of unchosen connections and obligations; and we become distinctive individuals, not by diving inwards in search of a nonexistent pure and authentic self, but rather by extending ourselves outwards and making connections with others and the larger world. As a dissenting principle, the romantic impulse can be liberating and invigorating; but as a governing principle, it becomes a ruinous heresy. (author bolded)

In other words we ONLY truly find ourselves through community. Yes there is walkabout (that’s another article). Yes, there is the spirit quest. Some journeys we must take alone. But when we cut ourselves out of the collective, something essential in us dies.

You and I need each other. Online just does not cut it.

We need to sit with, cry with, laugh with, shout with and play with people of all stripes and types. To do so is to push back the frantic, to eliminate desperation, to bring forth hope and those ecstatic moments of happiness that only come in the company of others.

I need to be able to laugh, cry, giggle and be in wonder with people who do not agree with my yard signs. To do so reminds me that while yes, there are fringe elements on both sides who deem me a danger, the real danger is to keep isolating ourselves at a time when losses are piling up for all of us.

The cost of hate and distrust when we are so very stressed out right now is enormous. Hate further isolates, foments fear and ages us horribly.

You and I need each other. We need hope. We need laughter at the absurd. We need hugs, heartfelt communication. We need to see that everyone is hurting right now.

And despite the very real compulsion to want to wish pain on those who voted against their own interests, and boy am I tempted, all that does is add more toxicity into my veins.

Last fall I spent five hours in a truck all over Western Texas with a MAGA voter. She had no idea how I was going to vote. I kept it that way. We had a hootin’ hollerin’ good time, laughed our butts off, and found out that we agreed on some 90% of the issues. Not always on how to fix them, but we agreed vastly more than we didn’t.

I still check in with her. The lie is that I’m her enemy and she’s mine. That terrible is lie is how we got here.

The only way forward is through. The only way through is together. The best way through together is with a diversity of people.

Finally, here’s the justification for reaching out to folks not like you.

I’ve got my neighbors coming over more. They’re walking my dog while I can’t, and I love having them over for tea and banana bread. They’re thirty years younger, Progressive. Some of their ideas are very different from mine. I am constantly learning.

Don’t always agree, but we don’t learn in a padded room full of yes-people.

As I recover from foot surgery I also get to see another neighbor who is a Trump voter. She brings my mail, checks in on me, and because she’s older than I am, I also have regularly checked in on her. She’s my elderly neighbor, and we need each other. We talk about lots of things. Of course we often disagree, but I am constantly learning.

I’ve worked in some aspect of diversity for decades. What it has taught me is that the more different the ideas at the table, the more lively the debate, the more interesting solutions you will get. That’s why diversity is touted so often.

When you get past the idiot argument that diveristy is only about Black folks, you realize that diversity of thought and experience are what open doors. Including those ideas is what makes hope more possible because we all learn to see differently. Seeing differently allows us to find new ways forward.

Open doors lead to hope. Hope leads to new ideas for moving through desperate times. New ideas lead to New Beginnings…but that’s my next article.

Get out of your house, out of your head, off your phone, away from your screens. If you want ideas and strategies on how to get through Endings and The Neutral Zone, the single most important, once again, is

Stop drinking the “solo is best” Koolaid. While there are plenty of folks, including me, who need solo time every so often, most of us need each other. Isolation is killing us. Using “me time” as an excuse to self-medicate with your screen and a substance is how our spirits die young.

Things will get probably get worse in America before they get better. Make more friends now. Create new connections now. Learn to laugh at the absurd, à la Viktor Frankl.

This essay explores Frankl’s work in a way that is immediately relatable to our times.

Photo by Shelby Cohron on Unsplash

When you’re in the hive, you thrive. Build yours. Make sure it’s full of different ideas, different lifestyles, different generations, all of it.

You will be amazed at how uplifted, hopeful, and full of ideas you can be when you are an essential part of everyone else’s life. When you are most assuredly needed.

Because you are.

Let’s play. No matter what, let’s still play.

Photo by Sebastián León Prado on Unsplash

With thanks to

Leo Notenboom

for sending me yet another copy of that terrific Atlantic article and all the good people- you know who you are- who spend phone time with me, laugh and learn with me, and share your ideas so that my brain doesn’t wither.

You rock. As for my readers, this was a heartfelt article. Please consider supporting my work, this takes a lot of time, research, effort and love to do. Thank you to all my supporters and I hope all of you have plenty of friends. You are needed.