Welcome to Age with Attitude, where I explore one question:
What sustains a life as we age?
My sister has spent most of her retirement looking after other people.
Not everybody. Just a handful.
Children. Grandchildren. Family members who need help. Family members who need understanding. Family members who need someone to quietly step in when life becomes complicated. Then there’s her volunteer work at the aged care home, especially in the dementia unit.
She was a primary school infants teacher for many years. She also ran a Special Education unit. Retirement did not remove those skills. It simply changed where they were applied. And amongst all of that, she maintains her capability so that she can continue her important work.
What strikes me is that she has chosen this life knowingly and willingly.
From the outside, it can look small.
Inside the family, it is anything but.
Recently, I found myself wondering why her life seems so meaningful despite containing so little of what our culture celebrates. No promotions. No audience. No growth targets. No productivity metrics.
Just usefulness.
Watching my sister sometimes leaves me feeling slightly inadequate. I am not sure I could do what she does. Her days are woven around the needs of other people. She steps in quietly, notices what needs doing and does it. There is very little drama and even less recognition.
Her life of service is visible. It is concrete. Nobody would look at it and wonder whether it matters. I can point to family members she supports, children she taught, people in the dementia unit and lives she has touched. The line from effort to contribution is direct.
She sustains life through care.
Maybe there is a gendered layer to care that I rebel against.
Many women of my generation were taught, explicitly or implicitly, that care is the highest form of virtue.
The woman who serves.
The woman who puts others first.
The woman who is needed.
Those stories run deep.
A woman who spends an afternoon reading philosophy can feel vaguely guilty even when she has fulfilled every obligation placed upon her prior to settling in with her book.
The old script whispers:
You could be doing something more useful.
Everybody understands the caregiver archetype. It’s made it easy to measure my own life against hers.
But what is my archetype?
I am not primarily a caregiver.
I am not primarily an activist.
I am not primarily a builder of institutions.
Observer, interpreter, sense-maker, teacher feel closer.
But those roles often feel less substantial because their effects travel invisibly. Part of my discomfort is that meaning feels less real than care.
I needed a different question. Given my capabilities, temperament, experience and circumstances, what is mine to do?
The distinction matters. My life is more ambiguous.
I read. I think. I write. I notice. I make sense of things. I ask questions like What sustains a life?
These things matter.
But they are harder to measure. Harder to point at. Harder to defend in a culture that admires visible service. And sometimes, even harder to defend to myself.
But are they?
I look at my life. Books matter. Ideas have changed me. Writers accompany me.
Iris Murdoch, Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt. None of them is caring for me directly. Yet they have changed the way I practice a life. Were they less useful than someone who cooked me a meal? Not necessarily. Just useful in a different register.
Could a life devoted to noticing, thinking, reading, and writing be enough?
I think about these women who have influenced me. Not through their direct service, but through ideas. Through noticing. Through helping me see the world differently. They remind me that paying deep attention is one way of serving the world. None of them would mistake attention for self-indulgence.
Attention is my usefulness work.
It is not the work of a caregiver. But it is work. And it matters.
This usefulness often has an invisible beneficiary.
I write an essay.
Somebody reads it six months later. They reconsider aging. Or capability. Or what decline means. Or what retirement is for.
I may never know. The chain is longer. The evidence is weaker. The contribution is harder to hold in my hands.
I cannot live my sister’s life. She cannot live mine. At seventy, that becomes increasingly apparent. Every life chosen closes off other possibilities.
Perhaps some of what I am feeling is the recognition that:
‘Had I been made differently, I might have lived differently.’
That can ache. But it doesn’t mean I chose wrongly. It simply means I can see the goodness in my sister’s path, but it isn’t mine. And perhaps the settling feeling won’t come from convincing myself that my usefulness is equal to hers. Perhaps it will come from accepting that they are not even comparable.
For a while, I have been asking:
What sustains a life as we age?
Watching my sister has reminded me that the question is larger than I thought.
My sister answered one way.
I am learning to trust another.
I’d love to hear how this lands for you.
Hit the Like button below, or let’s continue the conversation in the Comments.
I could almost have written that myself. It certainly resonates. I have always been a caregiver one way or another. Although I think I was more of a fixer. Culminating in running my own nursing home.
But now in my eighties I tend to observe others doing the caring. If I feel any guilt I remind myself that I did it, now it’s my turn.
My joy is now around crocheting, knitting, audiobooks, writing (I’m about to start writing on Substack) and being with the people with whom I can have a decent conversation. And my little dog Millie is keeping me going.
My phone is full of stuff that I love to read and research. My Facebook consists of groups who are full of meaningful conversations. I am never bored.
I liked reading this, because I am aware that I’m becoming quite an introvert. And I need to carry on being aware, or I could turn into a hermit. 🤣🥴