Do you remember as a child climbing up into your grandmother’s or grandfather’s lap and hearing stories that thrilled but also reassured you? No? Me neither. They were busy farmers.

But I do remember the kind way my grandparents treated my interest in eating. As soon as we arrived at the farm, my grandfather would take us for maple nut ice cream. And he always kept some chocolate in his pocket for us kids. In preparation for our visits, my grandmother made her famous butterscotch icebox cookies. My grandparents were responsive without harshness.

Unlike new parents who are often missing adequate support, grandparents tend to be more delighted (and forgiving) with children, responding with encouragement instead of control (see here and here for studies). Across societies, parents (aged ~16-40 years) generally are focused primarily on their own work identities, on finding their gifts and honing them or just bringing home the bacon—which is what they should be doing. They are self-conscious about their image and can project this onto their children, being harsh when children don’t live up to their expectations.

Grandparents can be better child raisers because they are less invested in their image, tend to be less controlling and better able and willing to give in to the spirit-based impulses of the child. They are less likely to worry about “how it looks” and ideally are not distracted with the concerns of the world.

Maslow (1970, 1971) pointed out that only older people can become self-actualized because younger people are still working on their basic needs (e.g., identity, vocation).  Those over 50 are more likely to have shifted away from an egocentric focus to a more integrative way of being (Rohr, 2011), attending to developing connections to others and the natural world, letting go of wanting or needing control, even though our culture does not encourage this.

As pointed out in the last post, Maslow’s description of self-actualized people aligns with the characteristics of wise elders in our ancestral past.

But what did the wise elders of our past know? How did they act?

• They provide an embrace of support to the young but also a push to not be afraid to self-actualize.
• Elders help the younger grow their unique spirits
  • “No matter what you do, some people won’t like you so why not be you? No one else can.”
• Wise elders indirectly guide with modeling living life to the fullest.
  • Wise elders know enjoyment and want you to experience it too, whether it’s ice cream, cookies or a sunset. After all, if you are not experiencing a foundational joy in your life, something is quite wrong (Rohr, 2011).
• Wise elders indirectly guide you in ways of flourishing --with stories
  • Stories help us learn to get back our self when we (inevitably) surrender to others’ preferences instead of those of our inner self. Fairy tales are all about finding the true self’s path among competing pressures.
• Wise elders know that words matter. It is easy to discourage the spiritual development of others with words. Stories provide an invitation instead of persuasion or coercion.
  • Wise elders encourage us towards love instead of fear, openness instead of bracing against.
    • They encourage us to work through our fears.
• Wise elders encourage the young to not surrender their life force.
  • They know everyone’s path is unique and everyone has a gift to uncover, develop and share with the community.
• In our ancestral conditions, such as among First Nation/American Indian/Native American groups, wise elders show you how to respect the rest of nature
  • They know the local landscape and how to live sustainably in that landscape.

It’s not that wise elders are naïve livers of life. They are scarred. To become a self-actualizer one must accept suffering and learn from it (instead of medicating it and running from its lessons). Suffering occurs when you let go of your certainty, your ego persona(s), your defenses against feeling open and vulnerable. Among the ancient philosophers, suffering was assumed to be necessary in attaining virtue and wisdom.

A wise elder exemplar of our time, Jean Vanier, founded L'Arche communities. He died earlier this year. Michael Spezio has investigated moral virtue within L'Arche community members and had a chance to interview Jean Vanier here.

Wise elders have learned from their scars. They have not been taken over by their wounds, nor have they become obsessed with escaping from the pain of imperfection. They have learned to get in touch with their true selves. All major religions, at their sophisticated (called “mystical”) level, emphasize the importance of personal knowledge of one’s true self, one’s existing connection to God or true reality.

Young children and wise elders seem to more easily slip into this broader reality, which gives one a sense of deep connection with the universe (Maslow’s ‘peak experience’). They are able to shift away from the materialistic, goal oriented, calculative existence that our societies emphasize.

That’s probably why so often grandparents and their grandchildren get along so well. They know that one of the deepest forms of joy is being present with one another, playing.

SERIES

1-Older and Weaker, or Older and Wiser?

2-Wise Elders in the Circle of Life

3-Self-Actualize and Become a Wise Elder

4-What Wise Elders Know

Hrdy, S. (2009). Mothers and others: The evolutionary origins of mutual understanding. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Maslow, A. H. (1970). Motivation and personality, 2nd ed. New York: Harper & Row.

Maslow, A. H. (1971). The farther reaches of human nature. New York: Viking.

Rohr, R. (2011). Falling upward: A spirituality for the two halves of life. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

As mentioned in the prior blog post in the series, in his book, Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble, Stephen Jenkinson pointed out the increased number of old people alongside the decreased number of “elders.” People are aging but not becoming wise. Jenkinson calls on those who are aging to take up elderhood. How do we do that?

It turns out that growing into elderhood is like becoming a self-actualizer.  Wise elders act like self-actualized people. According to Abraham Maslow, a founder of humanistic/positive psychology, self-actualization is everyone’s overall aim.  He says: “The more we learn about man’s natural tendencies, the easier it will be to tell him how to be good, how to be happy, how to be fruitful, how to respect himself, how to love, how to fulfill his highest potentialities. This amounts to automatic solution of many of the personality problems of the future. The thing to do seems to be to find out what you are really like inside, deep down, as a member of the human species and as a particular individual.” (Maslow, 1962, p. 4).

Maslow suggested practices that can help lead us toward self-actualization. These practices come more easily to those past middle adulthood when being unique (instead of conformist) seems necessary

Briefly, self-actualization practices include:

·       Experience life fully (emotionally, psychically, physically).

·       All day long, choose openness rather than defensiveness.

·       Know yourself by listening to your body/psyche’s preferences/reactions/intuitions.

·       Be honest about your true self and take responsibility for your feelings and actions.

·       Listen to your inner self and dare to follow your unique path.

·       Keep practicing self-actualization—it is a process.

·       Find ways to have more peak experiences (oceanic feelings of oneness with the universe).

·       Address your psychopathologies.

Maslow pointed to self-actualization as an essential part of human nature, an inner core that is biologically based and intrinsic, unless frustrated or discouraged by sick cultures.

Self-actualizers are rare in our societies today because of what Maslow called neuroticisms caused by “sick” cultures:

·       desire to dominate others or to submit to them---indications of a self-protective disposition (a brain that downshifts easily to survival modes)

and/or

·       desire to inflict pain (sadism)—an indication of deep trauma.

Maslow and psychoanalysts of his time thought that the illnesses of neuroticism and self-despise resided in the unconscious, in interaction with culture:

 “Sick people are made by a sick culture; healthy people are made possible by a healthy culture. But it just as true that sick individuals make their culture more sick and that healthy individuals make their culture more healthy.” (Maslow, 1962, p. 5)

The “sickness” starts in early life.

As I point out elsewhere (Narvaez, 2018), Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (physiological, safety, love, esteem, self-actualizing) is actually not sequential but needs to be concurrent in early childhood for proper child development. That is, a baby is oriented to self-actualizing, but needs caregivers to provide the security, love, esteem, etc., for proper neurobiological development and setting a trajectory for optimal fulfillment. We can observe the effects of the evolved nest, which meets basic needs, on optimal normal development.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes (The Power of the Crone, CD #4, track 4), describes the planting of young trees in a public park. Those who planted the trees were ignorant about how to plant trees with roots encased in wire baskets. Instead of removing the basket cages used for safe transport, they planted them with the basket cages intact. Although the young trees seemed to grow well initially, when a storm with fierce winds came up some many months later, the trees had no widespread, flexible base to allow them to bend—their roots were largely still trapped within the wires—and so their trunks all snapped at the base near the ground.

Too many of us have been “planted” this way—the wrong way—by a culture sick with the fever of exploitation (Wetiko), passed from person to person, parent to child, neighbor to neighbor. We’ve been toxically stressed in early life, so much so that we get easily anxious or angry (because the development of the stress response and other systems was undermined by culturally-based baby undercare—the missing evolved nest; see Thriving or Just Surviving? Are your Children Nested?). This makes self-actualization and elderhood a greater challenge.

In my work I point out how the degraded nest in early life leads to dispositions that work against wellbeing in self and others (Narvaez, 2014). Becoming self-actualized without the early beginnings of a healthy trajectory takes work. It is like approaching wisdom development after having an abusive or neglectful childhood. A lot of the body, psyche, mind are oriented to self-protective mechanisms rather than the openness that wisdom (and self-actualization) require.

Ideally, you have been raised in the evolved nest and exist in a supportive, positive community that is oriented to meeting basic needs. But if not, part of your elder wisdom can be to encourage the provision of the evolved nest to children.

What do we do to heal ourselves from early misbeginnings (or later trauma)?

Historian Jessica Grogan, author of Encountering America, filmed features of Maslow’s life. She discovers what Maslow himself learned as a grandparent. In his last years he found his own self-actualizing tendencies stimulated by his encounters with his grandchild. The grandchild demonstrated several key characteristics: spontaneity, freshness of appreciation, acceptance, autonomy and democratic orientation. And these facilitated Maslow’s own self-actualization.

Thus we can add to Maslow’s list of self-actualizing practices, an activity known to grow the right hemisphere and human relational and self-regulatory capacities anytime in life (Schore, 2019; Siegel, 1999):

·       Play spontaneously with young children

For grandparents, this might be the place to start on the path toward elderhood. I can vouch for it personally and empirically!

But there is more to being a wise elder, one must have a heartmind that is oriented to nurturing others. This is the topic of the next post.

SERIES

1-Older and Weaker, or Older and Wiser?

2-Wise Elders in the Circle of Life

3-Self-Actualize and Become a Wise Elder

4-What Wise Elders Know (Especially Women)

Maslow wrote about self actualization in his books, Motivation and Personality, Toward a Psychology of Being, and Farther Reaches of Human Nature.

Jenkinson, S. (2018).  Come of age: The case for elderhood in a time of trouble. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Maslow, A. H. (1962). Toward a psychology of being.

Maslow, A. H. (1970). Motivation and personality, 2nd ed. New York: Harper & Row.

Maslow, A. H. (1971). The farther reaches of human nature. New York: Viking.

Narvaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the development of human morality: Evolution, culture and wisdom. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

Narvaez, D. (Ed.)  (2018). Basic needs, wellbeing and morality: Fulfilling human potential. New York: Palgrave-MacMillan.

Schore, A.N. (2019). The development of the unconscious mind. New York: W.W. Norton.

Siegel, D. J. (1999). The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are. New York: Guilford Press.