One of my most favorite TV series from last summer was Never Have I Ever. In the third season, the protagonist's therapist says something along the lines of “Don’t hold yourself to the standards of what your past self wants the present you to become, because you are not the same person as you were back then; your values and goals have changed and that’s okay.” I think this quote kind of perfectly captures my observations during the Love, Connect, Care event. As I was manning the cornhole station, I felt a self-pressure to act high energy, cheering players on and encouraging onlookers to participate. While I conversed, danced, and played with many cornhole superstars, I also locked eyes with many onlookers who were happy to find a place to sit nearby, watch the game pensively, and absorb the activity that surrounded them—they didn’t need to be part of the action or even be acknowledged by the action. They seemed so content with their very existence in the event space.
To connect it back to the quote, I think my initial self-pressure to act a certain way was a case of me applying a certain standard of what I thought a meaningful event should look like and what I think the participating seniors should get out of the event (ie. fun in the form of excitement) when some of those standards didn’t even apply to them. Now that I think about it, it’s a very top-down mentality that is quite antithetical to the very nature of this class. One of our class readings, "Designing Better Urban Spaces for the Aging" by Mimi Kirk, talks about how urban planning should embrace seniors as researchers themselves (rather than the subject of research) in order to create a more bottom-up and therefore genuine understanding of how the built environment can also serve seniors. In this same spirit, perhaps I should have adopted this bottom-up mindset. I should have trusted the seniors to know what fun means to them and let them make the experience they wanted for themselves instead of me prescribing my own ideas to them.
I learned a similar lesson during my oral history project with my Extraordinary Person. Both my EP and I shared a love for travel but for different reasons. He saw travel as an opportunity to learn about new economic systems, while I saw it as an opportunity to learn a new way of living. We both developed different definitions of what a successful trip looked like. For him, he is happy if he visits a few real estate open houses. I am happy if I see something interesting. Yet, despite our differences we both felt fulfilled from all our travels, achieving it in our own way. I guess the moral of this blogpost is to recognize and respect the individuality of every person. It is through one’s life course where one learns what brings fulfillment to themselves. It is this individuality which makes one’s life course so beautiful.
To connect it back to the quote, I think my initial self-pressure to act a certain way was a case of me applying a certain standard of what I thought a meaningful event should look like and what I think the participating seniors should get out of the event (ie. fun in the form of excitement) when some of those standards didn’t even apply to them. Now that I think about it, it’s a very top-down mentality that is quite antithetical to the very nature of this class. One of our class readings, "Designing Better Urban Spaces for the Aging" by Mimi Kirk, talks about how urban planning should embrace seniors as researchers themselves (rather than the subject of research) in order to create a more bottom-up and therefore genuine understanding of how the built environment can also serve seniors. In this same spirit, perhaps I should have adopted this bottom-up mindset. I should have trusted the seniors to know what fun means to them and let them make the experience they wanted for themselves instead of me prescribing my own ideas to them.
I learned a similar lesson during my oral history project with my Extraordinary Person. Both my EP and I shared a love for travel but for different reasons. He saw travel as an opportunity to learn about new economic systems, while I saw it as an opportunity to learn a new way of living. We both developed different definitions of what a successful trip looked like. For him, he is happy if he visits a few real estate open houses. I am happy if I see something interesting. Yet, despite our differences we both felt fulfilled from all our travels, achieving it in our own way. I guess the moral of this blogpost is to recognize and respect the individuality of every person. It is through one’s life course where one learns what brings fulfillment to themselves. It is this individuality which makes one’s life course so beautiful.