My Thoughts About Caring For Our Aging Parents

This is a subject about which I am very opinionated. Whenever I have opinions like these I have to remember to separate myself from the opinions and remember that I am not my opinions. Otherwise how could “I” have an “opinion”? The opinion is not me and neither am I the opinion. But this is subject matter for a different article…

It seems like our western culture is so backwards in just about everything it does. We eat the wrong foods, we live a high stress lifestyle always trying to keep up with the Jones’ and we know we can’t do that but we keep trying.

We value the material and temporal things in life and don’t cultivate our souls and we pretend like we’ll never die. We’re constantly chasing after money, women and power in our lives at the expense of relationships, love and God.

And this idea which has unfortunately been woven into the very fabric of our lives applies to our view of people when they get older and how we care for them. In ancient societies or even societies today that are based on community and deeper spiritual truths, they see their elders as wise and look to them for guidance, instruction and wisdom.

They actually care about their opinions and seek information from them that can be passed down.

In our society it seems like we do whatever we can to get rid of them or put them in some kind of home. Recently a good friend of the family who is widowed wants to go into a home. She’s 94 years old and is tired of living by herself. In some cases I can see the value of this especially if the elderly person actually wants to go into a home or they want more community around them.

But the real issue to me is how we as younger adults view the situation. Why do we want to marginalize them as if they don’t matter and put them into a home keeping them entertained? Personally I never want to be put into a home. I’d prefer that my future children would want to take me in and help take care of me if I had to. But what I would like even better than that is to always be passionate about life doing work that helps people all the way up to my dying day.

To me putting me into a home so that I can be entertained all day is not my idea of fun. Sure entertainment is good and these old folks homes offer all kinds of entertainment, I want to be doing work that I’m passionate about and that affects people’s lives.

Why are we putting our elderly in these homes?

There are many reasons but it quite truly sickens me. Think about how much time and energy they expended during the best years of their lives to care for you, to feed you, to change your diapers to console you and read a story to you when you went to bed.

If it weren’t for them and their love and care for you, you wouldn’t even be alive to be able to make a decision as to whether you put them in a home or have them stay with you. I mean how selfish are we as a culture that we demean and marginalize the very people who gave us life and nurtured us just so that we can make more money or do things for ourselves?

The entire idea of old folks homes (and day care facilities as well) really do tell us a lot about where our society is headed and how sick we are as a culture.

My parents or Kate’s parents are NEVER going to go into a home, unless they want to. But I insist that they stay with us and I don’t care how crowded it gets in the house. Kids need to not only see their parents more but they need to see their grandparents and understand that they have a family history and a name to live up to.

It’s good for them to see where they come from in their genetic line and ancestry.

I’ve always been an alternative guy and never took the mainstream path that everybody else was doing no matter what it was. Look outside and look at other people’s lives and ask yourself, is that what you want? Do you want to live life like they do?

This is why I take care of myself now. I juice tons of green vegetables, I sweat in the sauna to take heavy metals out of my body. I take zeolite and clay for the same reason. I rebound to get rid of toxins, I meditate daily, do yoga, take medicinal herbal teas like chaga and reishi, lift weights and eat a very clean diet.

I’d say 30% of the reason I do these things is for selfish reasons. We all want to look good and have lots of energy. But mainly the reason why I lift weights in the gym, do colonics and do all the things that I do is so I can help others and live a long healthy life where I don’t have to depend on others for assistance.

There are no guarantees but this is my motivation.

We cannot control the lives that our parents lived and perhaps they didn’t do these things but that’s okay. We need to care for them now because they sacrificed the best years of their lives to care for us.

Whatever you do please consider having your aging parents at your house living with you and your children instead of putting them in an old folks home where they’re not surrounded by family.

Think about it, when you’re old and after all you’ve done for your children, would you want them to cast you aside like your life meant nothing and put you in some home?

If you wouldn’t want your children to do that to you, why would you do that to your aging parents now?