The plague of worry

My generations are no strangers to worry. It seems from the first decade we began to become aware of the world, there were big things to worry about. We were the generation to grow up with a reality that world destruction was possible at the hands of a man-made weapon that did exist and was pointed at them. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, the decades when we were entering youth, it was common for us to have to run drills to hide under our desks as a defence against the arrival of a nuclear bomb. Even back then, we knew those desks were a faint defence against such a devastating weapon. I remember having to stay indoors, to wait until the radiation cloud blew past when the wind blew from the East and a Nuclear Test had taken place.

So from worrying about the draft, bomb, Vietnam or about corruption in government, we grew up as a generation of worriers. Of course, worry is endemic in the human psychology. And as we grew into adults, parents and the ones who would come to take leadership in the world, those worries of youth paled compared to the new responsibilities we faced.

This century brings the advent of the retirement years for us. Over the years, many have learned good coping mechanisms to defray some of the worries of life. We have learned that worry about money, their children or whether the car needs a new set of tires should be taken in stride. That is because to some extent, most of these issues can be solved. Money woes can be fixed with better jobs and money management. Kids can be corrected and turn out fine even if they have troubled youths. And new tires for the car are easy to buy.

But the worries of the retirement years are often beyond such short-term fixes. We tend to be hands-on managers who have charged through life with the attitude of, “let me at that problem. I can fix it.” But problems of ageing are not always as easily conquered as many of the problems we conquered in their younger years. Some problems that demand a different approach in the later third of life that we are approaching include…

• Incurable illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, ALS or other forms of dementia for which the only relief is death.
• Running out of money because Social Security was not adequate and life was too challenging to really save up for retirement.
• The prospect of passing many years in an old folk’s home with no hope of release and no physical resources to save oneself can cause panic attacks in many of us.
• Dire issues with adult children such as death or illness, marital woes or the need for grandparents to raise our grandchildren present problems to us that seem beyond our physical, emotional and financial abilities to solve.

These new worries are unlike the worries of their middle age years. These very real and dire problems loom even larger if we see them on the horizon. They can be made larger by being suddenly alone by the passing of a spouse. Now one of our primary resources for staying calm and solving problems has been taken away from us.

This is a time in life when more than ever we need to get a refresher course in stress management and learning that worry cannot solve these problems. And like our parents before us for generations, we too will learn to face retirement with grace and maturity and to live with problems with the same courage we faced down the problems of our youth.