Today in class, we checked in on eachother to see how people were doing handling the stresses of spring quarter. A lot of people from the class are graduating after this quarter, so the stress of finding jobs and concurrently finishing difficult classes is a recipe for exhaustion, so I hope that my fellow classmates are taking steps to enjoy the process as much as the delayed reward end-result. It is important to take a deep breathe sometimes to appreciate all you have and to keep moving forward with a smile on your face. This concept was very well articulated through the presentation on the book we have been reading in class. We had discussions on balancing future visions and present satisfactions, why appreciating people before its too late is so important, etc. We go through life trying to achieve goals and knock things off of the bucket list, and this is good, as long as we are not constantly looking forward to the next thing. If we are focusing on events in the future while doing things now, how much are we being mindful of the present? We need to look at life as a holistic balance between learning and remembering the past, enjoying the present and the process to achieve your goals, and looking towards a positive future. On another note, we also met with our HAP groups to discuss the next steps to planning our events. My group is doing the walkathon, and we have a set time and date. We have reached out to some walking groups, but we still have a few groups we need to reach out to and we need to map out a course to have an idea of what we want the course to be. I am excited for this event, and it will be a great pre-cursor to my marathon I am running the following day!
This tima at our visit to Casa, we arrived and talked to our professors about our Healthy Aging Capstone Projects while enjoying the backdrop of the cool blue La Jolla sea. After debriefing about what we still needed to do to ensure a successful HAP, we walked inside to Casa to sit down with a few of the elders there to listen and learn about their life stories. The first man I talked to was Ed, someone I had talked to before. Ed is a very unique guy, as he was a pilot in the military and has seen much of this world through his career. Him and my dad were actually born in the same place, so that was a good conversation starter between the two of us. When we were talking to him in a bigger group, he went around the circle and asked each of us our majors and what we wanted to do with our careers. The second conversation I took part in was with a couple who were eachothers co-pilots for many years. This couple flew astronauts, had a non-profit to fly kids with terminal illnesses and give them a fulfilling life experience, and they even raised a mountain lion! These kind of stories don't get brought up if you don't take the time to sit with elders and ask what their life was like. It is important to listen, as it is one of the biggest forms of compassion and genuine care for anothers well-being. Last time at Casa, I talked to one of the members who skydived on her 90th birthday, and I was so inspired that I actually went skydiving myself to experience life to the fullest. I saw her at the most recent event, and had to tell her I went thorugh with skydiving. She was so happy to hear it!
I really could talk about life for hours. Something special happens when you get past small talk to converse about visions for the future and lived experiences that have shaped those visions. Wayne, Natalie, and I had the opportunity to talk to a women who had a great story to tell. When she was 20, she got married and she started her family. Back in the days of the Vietnam War, this was not uncommon, as military families often married young and people married to also get out of going to war. The women we talked to lived through the Civil Rights Movement, saw the aftermath of soldiers coming home from Vietnam, etc. She and her husband are still going strong after almost 50 years of marriage, which is highly venerable. I want to have that sustainable lifelong relationship with my future wife, so the fact that she and her husband were able to do that is definitely encouraging. We all ended up sharing our own stories from when we were 20 years old, and this sparked a lot of conversation about how we got into the Public Health/Global Health fields and what direction we want to go with what we know. Listening to the experiences of others with an open mind will leave you with an open heart by the end of the conversation, and a lot more understanding about where others are coming from.
Today in class, we got rolling again on the HAP's. There are 6 different projects going on, and each of them are heading in a direction towards positive impact in the senior communities we are setting out to serve. My group is setting out to organize an intergenerational walkathon, and we are going to call it "Walk of Life". We have a general location and overarching plan for guidance, but no specifics have been reached. We are going to utilize the knowledge from a past Life Course Scholar and start talking to different social walking groups to see if they would be interested in participating and spreading the word. There are many elder walking clubs in San Diego, and we hope to bring in as many of them as we can for this event. On another note, I am extremely excited for my individual endeavor of making a rap/motivational video to address the topic of ageism, and how reverse the stereotypes against aging. Aging is a good thing because your glass is continually becoming more full, and your abundance of knowledge and experience is something that should be celebrated. I am looking forward to this quarter!
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JAYSON HEFNERWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
June 2019
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