The day after I pushed the send button on the last blog post in June, I came across an article in the New York Times that was riveting to me. I’ve been mulling the contents ever since, with the clear understanding that I would attempt to write about it. However, I have not been able to adequately wrap my pen around so complex a subject. The result has been that I have written and re-written this post, each time with a different slant and each time it comes up short. So, I start again, humbly acknowledging that the subject and the internal conflict that arises within me, in relation to the subject, continues to challenge me.
The article describes a movie set in Japan, made by Chie Hayakawa called Plan 75. In the movie, the state is offering an incentive to those who sign up to voluntarily end their lives. The criterion to qualify are three-fold; being 75 years of age or older, having no money to self-support, and having no supportive familial or social network. The government offers $800 to anyone who signs up for this plan. The money is theirs to do with as they wish. They could spend it on small luxuries they would otherwise not be able to afford, have a last vacation, or bequeath to a child or grandchild.
In times of environmental or political upheaval, in times of stress or scarcity, the bookends of the population are invariably the ones most vulnerable. Is this solution of voluntary culling of the far side of the age bell curve that odious? In Japan and many other industrialized countries where there is an inverse population ratio, the purse that pays for social services to support the elderly and those without financial resources of their own, is already stretched or empty. So, what to do? Is this plan that far out of line, or morally questionable? Is it really so unthinkable that at some point, one country or another might offer such a proposal to those the state might otherwise have to support, both financially and socially? Does the state have a duty of care to the ‘whole’ rather than individuals who may require too much, just to keep afloat?
When resources are limited, as is becoming more real in more places on this planet, who do we support, who do we turn our backs on? How do we decide? I can’t see a way forward as I can feel into both and all sides, the individual, the commons, the all and the one. That’s why this whole dilemma continues to bug me. Like a bothersome tooth. It is a classic double approach conflict between a society valuing the viability of the ‘whole’, while at the same time being unable or unwilling to support parts that make up the whole.
When I was younger, I might have been more cavalier towards the elders, deemed them dispensable in order to support better the need of the new generation. But now that I’m one of those who could be considered more dispensable, I feel somewhat differently. Those of us who are edging up in decades may regard indigenous cultures who revere their ancestors or Eastern cultures who dote on their parents and elders with some sentiment or yearning.
I also read of some First Nations like the Inuit of Northern Canada whose elders voluntarily go onto the ice to die when they determine (usually by community agreed upon markers) they are no longer able to contribute to the family. I feel great admiration for that stance. Can we afford to caretake the elderly who are not able to care for themselves and do not have familial or friendship supports to lean on? Can we ethically, morally and humanly afford not to?
Who do we become if we don’t choose all of us, but only some of us?
But, if you were allocating limited finances towards elder care or childhood education, which way would you lean? If we were honest, I do reckon that most of us would lean in favor of the young. I certainly would. Therein is the rub!
While our particular society expounds on life as being precious, all life, all ages, we do not in fact, behave in a manner that supports that ideology. If we were not aware of this before, then surely Covid set that record straight. The nursing home debacle was a case in point. There were insufficient resources in place to deal with the pandemic, to helping people in group homes and elder care homes that were already understaffed and under resourced to start with, precisely because they are a less valued part of our society.
Most of us who are no longer an integral part of the work force know intimately the felt sense of being subtly or overtly marginalized. Especially as the skills we may bring to the table are not as appropriate to a very fast-moving technological society which trades on speed, innovation and branding. For many of us it is a relief to be off the merry go round of importance and survival. It is also a massive stripping of identity to no longer be as needed, or be of utility as was true when part of the work force, in whatever capacity we served.
I remember now, with a certain sadness and embarrassment, the period after I stopped my professional career at the early age of 62 due to medical necessity. For two years I spun, like a top without direction or center. What arose were ideas and beliefs that I had not even been aware of prior. But from the day of my withdrawal from being a working person, I began to relate to myself as at taker, not a giver. I needed resources that were anyway scarce without being one of those who helped replenish the bucket. I had to withdraw savings to live, I was drawing down not shoring up. I was taking. A taker.
It was a very hard time during which I had to confront what a human life might be worth and how we value it. What was my life worth, now that I was no longer contributing to the work force. The value of a human life appears to be a moving target depending on so many social factors, war, food, natural resources, pandemics, in which country you live, how connected you are to a social matrix, how much money you have, how old you are? We humans may expound that all life is precious, but not all life is equally valued, regarded and preserved.
Some lives are worth a hypothetical $800 dollars, some infinitely less. Yet, in the US of A, the wealthy father of a friend managed to spend $1,000,000 on blood transfusions to prolong his life just a few months. He was on Medicare, so it was tax payer money, our money. He was 86.
Medical ethicists sit on hospital boards to determine who gets the kidney, the eyes, the heart. They have to make those determinations on a regular and revised basis. Does it go to the 75-year-old retired but vibrant author who volunteers and has a great connected quality of life or to the much younger alcoholic who has a host of complementary issues and is isolated? How do we value and make those determinations?
The solution, that there be enough financial resources distributed fairly, is wishful thinking. Anyone with eyes can see that the reverse is happening. We have less collectively. Less unity, less resources, less stability, but more people, more pollution and more power inequity. But having enough financial resources is only part of what would need to change.
Having lived communally for 13 years, I can testify that there is much to recommend it. The model of extended family which still exists in many parts of the world tends to include the elderly and their gifts, thereby mitigating the awful loneliness that would even encourage elders to sign up to die. It has merit but is not as operational in industrial societies. What I do know is that ‘civilized’ societies, with their nucellar families, and our separate houses, promote the structure for elder isolation and loneliness which is a devastation in and of itself. A loss of massive proportion for a culture that doesn’t allow us to mine the wisdom and stories of our elders. That seems like the saddest aspect of the movie’s premise and one that personally scares me the most. The prospect of being alone or lonely in later years, as so many are, when one’s partner and many of ones’ friends have died, not being of use, or feeling connected to the greater pulse of society is as terrifying as all the other future terrors lurking around, vying for dominance. Climate, finance, social disruption, food security.
It has required many torn up blog attempts for me to realize and admit why this has been so hard to write about. I have my own personal double approach conflict. I would like to see the young be favored yet, now that I am older, I have a personal investment in continuance. I also have a whole new appreciation for that slice of life and what gifts it brings and ways in which it might even be of value.
I love old dogs. They don’t fetch, or even wag much, but they are adorable, for the most part anyway. Old people aren’t always as fetching as old dogs to be sure, but surely, they have the right to pasture, simply because they have done their thing, whether they have been a gangster, or a banker, a pirate or a priest, a gardener or a gourmand, a poet or a polluter. Every part we play is part of the unified whole, it adds color, texture, depth and realness. Or do we become like a Puritan culture that only ascribe value to the ‘good’, as defined by them.
In a perfect world I would like to be allowed to pasture, to be the old dog, going white around the muzzle, as indeed I am. To eat the grasses of the field. I would prefer to have the luxury to smell the roses and no longer have to plant them or tend them. To reap the harvest of a life. To be loved or loveable, not because I have as much to give back, but because now I see the fuller arc of life, feel a fuller spectrum of facets as part of the whole. Now I know deeply how precious is each day, relationship, tree, animal, meal. Maybe my humble contribution is merely gratitude, for all the beauty that still is, all the small but miraculous things of ordinary life that comprise a day. Sunlight, clean air, the old dog curled up on the end of the bed, my beloved husband of a quarter of a century who still brings me breakfast in bed, clean water, hot water, food on the table. Maybe my only job now as an elder, retired from central utility is to be one of the quiet voices that whisper admiration for the many things that we take as givens, but are not givens at all. One of great quirks and unfortunate aspects of human psychology is our boundless capacity to only appreciate things after they have been taken away.
Much will be taken away as our world turns in the ways many of us anticipate and fear. Let’s not only mourn them after they are gone, the trees, the birds, the bees, the flowers, the polar bears, the elephants, the great blue herons, the elders who are poor, those who are lonely. The list is long, too long for all that is endangered. Let’s love them up and marvel at their lives while we are all still here to appreciate. A wise man who recently died was asked, “What is the true role of elders”. He thought for a long time, then answered simply, “To bestow blessings”.
On this day, the sun is shining up here in the Pacific North West, even as the the first leaves fall away, preparing the trees and scrubs for the harsh months yet to come.
With love and blessings,
Priya.
Leaves
