ALTHOUGH not a frequent reader of papers these days, occasionally, I find something in print that strikes me.
Reading The Age last Tuesday I found a piece that started: “Many of us quite like to be alone some of the time. But to be lonely is to suffer, and the grim fact is more than a quarter of people over 56 who live alone are lonely.”
None of us can be complacent about this. Nearly all of us will live to be over 65, if we have not passed that mark yet, and I have! In fact the majority of our parish is probably over 65 already.
While the incidence of all people – not just older people – living alone is increasing. So the vast majority of us have a chance of ending up lonely.
That is the modern way. And many people will assume that is normal or has always been the case. But that is not true. It is a new phenomenon. For most of human history, in most societies, the elderly have not been left alone. They have lived with or near their children. Sociology shows this to be the case as does some literature.
In Jane Austen’s Emma, which I read at school, the climax of the story comes when, after all the ups and downs in their relationship, George Knightley finally proposes to Emma Woodhouse. Many people would have forgotten that she refuses him.
Why? Because she loves Knightley, who is, among his many attributes, charmingly rich. But she refuses him because, “while her dear father lived, any change of condition must be impossible for her.”
She believes she has an absolute, unbreakable obligation to stay living with her lone, elderly father.
The problem is overcome when Knightley offers to come to live with her at her father’s home after they marry. So all is resolved to make a lovely Austen happy ending. But it is a reflection of a culture that has dramatically changed.
Today, many older people live in residential care, nursing homes or simply alone. It is rare these days to come across a family where an elderly parent is living with one of their adult children.
Of course, many would not want it or perhaps need it. However, statistically, those elderly people are three times more likely to feel lonely than others. They are also more likely to suffer declining health and mental abilities.
Consequently, they are more likely to enter nursing homes While children have a duty to look after their elderly parents to the best of their ability. This will vary according to circumstances.
It also plays into a culture where ‘self-actualisation’ is the prevailing philosophy or value. We should all be on guard that this does not dominate all our thinking. Duties and obligations are still relevant and challenge us to value people not things.