When The World Moves Without Us…

We’ve written before about how reduced social engagement can strike people of all ages, and what can be done about it:

How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

…but today we’re going to talk more about a specific aspect of it, namely, the alienation that can come with old age—and other life transitions too, but getting older is something that (unless accident or incident befall us first) all of us will definitely do.

What’s the difference?

Loneliness is a status, alienation is more of a process. It can be the alienation in the sense of an implicit “you don’t belong here” message from the world that’s geared around the average person and thus alienates those who are not that (a lack of accessibility to people with disabilities can be an important and very active example of this), and it can also be an alienation from what we’ve previously considered our “niche” in the world—the loss of purpose many people feel upon retirement fits this bill. It can even be a more generalized alienation from our younger selves; it’s easy to have a self-image that doesn’t match one’s current reality, for instance.

Read more: Estranged by Time: Alienation in the Aging Process

So, how to “un-alienate”?

To “un-alienate”, that is to say, to integrate/reintegrate, can be hard. Some things may even be outright impossible, but most will not be!

Consider how, for example, former athletes become coaches—or for that matter, how former party-goers might become party-hosts (even if the kind of “party” might change with time, give or take the pace at which we like to live our lives).

What’s important is that we take what matters the most to us, and examine how we can realistically still engage with that thing.

This is different from trying to hold on grimly to something that’s no longer our speed.

Letting go of the only thing we’ve known will always be scary; sometimes it’s for the best, and sometimes what we really need is just more of a pivot, like the examples above. The crux lies in knowing which:

• Is our relationship with the thing (whatever it may be) still working for us, or is it just bringing strife now?
• If it’s not working for us, is it because of a specific aspect that could be side-stepped while keeping the rest?
• If we’re going to drop that thing entirely (or be dropped by it, which, while cruel, also happens in life), then where are we going to land?

This latter is one where foresight is a gift, because if we bury our heads in the sand we’re going to land wherever we’re dropped, whereas if we acknowledge the process, we can make a strategic move and land on our feet.

Here’s a good pop-science article about this—it’s aimed at people around retirement age, but honestly the advice is relevant for people of all ages, and facing all manner of life transitions, e.g. career transitions (of which retirement is of course the career transition to end all career transitions), relationship transitions (including B/B/B/B: births, betrothals/break-ups, and bereavements) health transitions (usually: life-changing illnesses and/or disabilities—which again, happens to most of us if something doesn’t get us first), etc. So with all that in mind, this becomes more of a “how to reassess your life at those times when it needs reassessing”:

How to Reassess Your Life in Retirement

But that doesn’t mean that letting go is always necessary

Sometimes, the opposite! Sometimes, the age-old advice to “lean in” really is all the situation calls for, which means:

• Be ready to say “yes” to things, and if nobody’s asking, be ready to “hey, do you wanna…?” and take a “build it and they will come” approach. This includes with people of different ages, too! Intergenerational friendships can be very rewarding for all concerned, if done right. Communities that span age-ranges can be great for this—they might be about special interests (this writer has friends ranging through four generations from playing chess, for instance), they could be religious communities if we be religious, LGBT groups if that fits for us, even mutual support groups such as for specific disabilities or chronic illness if we have such—notice how the very things that might isolate us can also bring us together!
• Be open-minded to new experiences; it’s easy to get stuck in a rut of “I’ve never done that” and mistake that self-assessment for an uncritical assumption of “I’m not the kind of person who does that”. Sometimes, you really won’t be! But at least think about it and entertain the possibility, before dismissing it out of hand. And, here’s a life tip: it can be really good to (within the realms of safety, and one’s personal moral principles, of course) take an approach of “try anything once”. Even if we’re almost certain we won’t like it, and even if we then turn out to indeed not like it, it can be a refreshing experience—and now we can say “Yep, tried that, not doing that again” from a position of informed knowledge. That’s the only way we get to look back on a richly lived life of broad experiences, after all, and it is never too late for such.
• Be comfortable prioritizing quality over quantity. This goes for friends, it goes for activities, it goes for experiences. The topic of “what’s the best number of friends to have?” has been a matter of discussion since at least ancient Greek times (Plato and Aristotle examined this extensively), but whatever number we might arrive at, it’s clear that quality is the critical factor, and quantity after that is just a matter of optimizing.

In short: make sure you’re investing—in your relationships, in your areas of interest, in your community (whatever that may mean for you personally), and most of all, and never forget this: in yourself.

Take care!

Managing Sibling Relationships In Adult Life

After our previous main feature on estrangement, a subscriber wrote to say:

❝Parent and adult child relationships are so important to maintain as you age, but what about sibling relationships? Adult choices to accept and move on with healthier boundaries is also key for maintaining familial ties.❞

And, this is indeed critical for many of us, if we have siblings!

Writer’s note: I don’t have siblings, but I do happen to have one of Canada’s top psychologists on speed-dial, and she has more knowledge about sibling relationships than I do, not to mention a lifetime of experience both personally and professionally. So, I sought her advice, and she gave me a lot to work with.

Today I bring her ideas, distilled into my writing, for 10almonds’ signature super-digestible bitesize style.

A foundation of support

Starting at the beginning of a sibling story… Sibling relationships are generally beneficial from the get-go.

This is for reasons of mutual support, and an “always there” social presence.

Of course, how positive this experience is may depend on there being a lack of parental favoritism. And certainly, sibling rivalries and conflict can occur at any age, but the stakes are usually lower, early in life.

Growing warmer or colder

Generally speaking, as people age, sibling relationships likely get warmer and less conflictual.

Why? Simply put, we mature and (hopefully!) get more emotionally stable as we go.

However, two things can throw a wrench into the works:

1. Long-term rivalries or jealousies (e.g., “who has done better in life”)
2. Perceptions of unequal contribution to the family

These can take various forms, but for example if one sibling earns (or otherwise has) much more or much less than another, that can cause resentment on either or both sides:

• Resentment from the side of the sibling with less money: “I’d look after them if our situations were reversed; they can solve my problems easily; why do they resent that and/or ignore my plight?”
• Resentment from the side of the sibling with more money: “I shouldn’t be having to look after my sibling at this age”

It’s ugly and unpleasant. Same goes if the general job of caring for an elderly parent (or parents) falls mostly or entirely on one sibling. This can happen because of being geographically closer or having more time (well… having had more time. Now they don’t, it’s being used for care!).

It can also happen because of being female—daughters are more commonly expected to provide familial support than sons.

And of course, that only gets exacerbated as end-of-life decisions become relevant with regard to parents, and tough decisions may need to be made. And, that’s before looking at conflicts around inheritance.

So, all that seems quite bleak, but it doesn’t have to be like that.

Practical advice

As siblings age, working on communication about feelings is key to keeping siblings close and not devolving into conflict.

Those problems we talked about are far from unique to any set of siblings—they’re just more visible when it’s our own family, that’s all.

So: nothing to be ashamed of, or feel bad about. Just, something to manage—together.

Figure out what everyone involved wants/needs, put them all on the table, and figure out how to:

• Make sure outright needs are met first
• Try to address wants next, where possible

Remember, that if you feel more is being asked of you than you can give (in terms of time, energy, money, whatever), then this discussion is a time to bring that up, and ask for support, e.g.:

“In order to be able to do that, I would need… [description of support]; can you help with that?”

(it might even sometimes be necessary to simply say “No, I can’t do that. Let’s look to see how else we can deal with this” and look for other solutions, brainstorming together)

Some back-and-forth open discussion and even negotiation might be necessary, but it’s so much better than seething quietly from a distance.

The goal here is an outcome where everyone’s needs are met—thus leveraging the biggest strength of having siblings in the first place:

Mutual support, while still being one’s own person. Or, as this writer’s psychology professor friend put it:

❝Circling back to your original intention, this whole discussion adds up to: siblings can be very good or very bad for your life, depending on tons of things that we talked about, especially communication skills, emotional wellness of each person, and the complexity of challenges they face interdependently.❞

Our previous main feature about good communication can help a lot:

Save Time With Better Communication