Attitude
Attitude is everything. We all know that. Your attitude says a lot about you. It’s the old glass half empty vs glass half full story, isn’t it? The years ahead can be filled with doom and gloom or they can be the best years of your life.
Attitude can mean everything, or it can mean nothing at all. Let me illustrate what I mean by telling you the story of two ladies that I encountered during my long history of caregiving.
Martha decided that she was ready to die. She gave away all her possessions, put on her prettiest nightgown, and went to bed. She pulled the covers up to her chin, folded her arms across her chest and settled in to wait. Of course it doesn’t work that way. She waited and waited, but all she accomplished was a speedy transfer out of the Assisted Living room that she called home. Staff in Assisted Living didn’t have the time to beg her to eat, to get dressed, or to stop being a royal pain. She ended up in a Full Care Facility, where she lived for another four years. Did she enjoy her life there? I don’t know, but I am guessing not, and all because she had decided that life wasn’t worth the effort anymore. There are things that we cannot control.
Mary, another lady of the same age, had a different attitude. She liked her life. While going about her business one day she noticed numbness in her arm and leg. She fell and a trip to the Emergency Room was indicated. As she was being wheeled down the hall on a stretcher, she called out to everyone within ear shot, “I’m having a stroke, and I don’t have time for this right now.” Quite a gal huh. Her plan did not include dying that day, or any other day soon, because she had places to go and things to do.
Which one of these stories reflects how you feel about age and aging? Is it your goal to give up, or do you have a plan? Keep in mind that if you don’t have a plan of your own, someone else will step in to make one for you.
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