Aging, Ready to Give Up on Life - But This Disconnect with Possibility Overtakes All Generatiions

 In the Tarot, the card from the major arcana - The Tower - captures a collapse of what was. Its message is: You can collapse with it or you can build something new.

Essentially that gets to the heart of the phenomenon of aging and, despite having no serious health problem, giving up on life. In the Netherlands in 2015, a team headed by Els van Wijingaarden researched what was driving that state of numbness. The entire study is published in Social Science & Medicine.

The major factors, as I interpret the research, are:

Loneliness

A sense of not mattering

Loss of voice in society

Tiredness

Fear of dependency.

This interested me because in Tarot readings I encounter the same five also in youth and the middle-aged. Usually those suffering in this emotional disconnect seek relief through some kind of addiction. It could be to a person (traditional co-dependency), place (establishing a geographical identity), thing (drugs), and/or process (as in chasing extreme success or sex). 

Fortunately, just the fact that a human being in that kind of pain contacts a Tarot reader indicates that there is some residue of hope. After the collapse (external and real and/or an internal emotional state) there could be an attempt to try doing things differently or at least view things differently. Yes, just trying is often the way the light gets turned back on.

That could be as simple as joining a whatever and volunteering to help out with its functioning. That's exactly why the iconic 12-step program AA immediately assigns service tasks to new members. That makes them a part of. That gives them a voice in how things operate. That makes them know they matter.

Or it could have as many moving parts as entering psychotherapy, learning meditation, changing careers, relocating where there is more social cohesion, and/or taking up an artistic pursuit. It was the latter which awakened the will to keep living in a 14-year-old. She could envision the creativity she discovered in watercolors being applied to when she would go on to become licensed as a hairdresser. So far, so good.

There is no one solution. But there is a necessary first move. That is to grab hold of hope.

Tarot Card Reader. Medium. Intuitive Career Coach.

Empathy and compassion.

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