3 Aging in Place Paradoxes

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.

~Niels Bohr

Aging in Place

Life is filled with Paradoxes. For example, Mark Mason has listed 20 that are True, I include 4 here:

1. The more you hate a trait in someone else, the more likely you are avoiding it in yourself. Carl Jung believed that characteristics in others that bother us are reflections of the parts of ourselves that we deny. Freud referred to it as “projection.” Most people call it “being an asshole.” For example, the woman who is insecure about her weight will call everyone else fat. The man who’s insecure about his money will criticize others for theirs.

2. People who can’t trust, can’t be trusted. People who are chronically insecure in their relationships are more likely to sabotage them. Call it the Good Will Hunting syndrome, but one-way people protect themselves from getting hurt is by hurting others first.

3. The more you try to impress people, the less impressed they’ll be. Nobody likes a try hard.

4. The more you fail, the more likely you are to succeed. Insert inspirational famous person quote here. You’ve probably heard many of them. Edison tried over 10,000 prototypes before getting the light bulb right. Michael Jordan got cut from his high school team. Success comes from improvement and improvement comes from failure. There’s no shortcut around it.

3 Paradoxes of Aging in Place

Aging in Place is a condition of living, and that means the concept is also subject to paradoxes. I list the BIG 3 that I’ve gleaned over the many years of studying the subject:

1). The Older we are, the happier we are.

2). Those “burdens of home ownership, are actually good for you.

3). Stubborn Independence and Resistance to change leads to dependency.  

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Why People get Happier as they get older:  The Economist