Here’s a question I’ve been pondering this week: can
excellent caregiving be taught? Imagine
the perfect caregiver… someone who listens with their whole being, someone who
enables the disabled with quiet dignity and humor, someone who puts their
charge in the spotlight, while they retreat to the shadows. Can these skills and talents be taught to our
next generation of humankind?
Howard Gleckman spoke in his Forbes blog this week about a
radical new approach to Alzheimer’s care.
He was exhorting the virtues of Dr. G. Allen Power’s book, DementiaBeyond Disease in which Power calls for us to ‘see people with dementia as
having experienced a change in their world view. We must not try to change them, but rather
meet them where they are, without drugs.’
Gleckman: He (Power) is, for instance, an
outspoken critic of segregated dementia units (often called memory care) that
have become the standard in many residential care facilities. At the same
time, he offers many practical ideas for helping those with dementia.
Imagine someone who is extremely agitated. You can
control her aggression with medication. Or you can identify the cause of her
upset, and change it. Maybe she is in pain, or troubled by loud noises. She may
not be able to describe in words why she is distressed. But if you know what to
look for, you can learn from her body language.
If we
agree with Power and Gleckman, we will certainly need to be able to teach good
caregiving. People are required to carry out this approach. And paying for those people will depend on
how much we value the altered world view and experience of those we love with
dementia.
But,
perhaps it’s a spiritual poverty that we healthy, younger folks feel that will ultimately
drive us to teach and train excellent caregiving skills to the masses.
The
very wise New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote an OpEd last week that
ignited a lively discussion in my family.
Here’s what he said about a good definition of ‘meaning’ in peoples’
lives:
Yet what do we mean when we use the word
meaning?
The
first thing we mean is that life should be about more than material success.
The person leading a meaningful life has found some way of serving others that
leads to a feeling of significance.
Second,
a meaningful life is more satisfying than a merely happy life. Happiness is
about enjoying the present; meaning is about dedicating oneself to the future.
Happiness is about receiving; meaningfulness is about giving. Happiness is
about upbeat moods and nice experiences. People leading meaningful lives
experience a deeper sense of satisfaction.
In
this way, meaning is an uplifting state of consciousness. It’s what you feel
when you’re serving things beyond self.
But Brooks went on to
discredit the current, more new-age seeking of meaning with its hallmarks of
self-regarding emotion and immediate gratification. He worries that our society lacks a hierarchy
of values and moral architecture – that’s where the discussion in our family
started: should we impose a system of moral values that is rooted in justice
for the common good, or is personal freedom more in need of protection? I
believe it’s a balance.
One thing is for
sure. We won’t have any caregivers for
our generation or the next if we define meaning only in the most individual
terms….especially if we choose to treat our loved ones with a human touch rather
than drugs. Society's next big challenge is to create a language and culture of care that gives meaning to all our lives.
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