Building Blocks to Better Aging with Dr. Hugh Pates

Welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast. Here's our host, Dr. Joseph Casciani.

Well, hello to everyone joining us today on our podcast. You're listening to one of our Successful Aging episodes this month on the Living to 100+ program, and I'm your host, Joe Casciani. Each week, our conversations educate and inspire, helping you get the best out of all the years we're given, regardless of what obstacles come our way. Today's event is a conversation about aging well from a psychological perspective. As host of the Living to 100 Club podcast, I will be interviewing Dr. Hugh Pates, a clinical psychologist with a specialty in working with older adults. We'll discuss some of the central elements for a successful aging journey, including how people cope with the many physical, emotional, and personal setbacks that often occur as we age. We will explore how this coping is sometimes adaptive and healthy and sometimes not so adaptive. Our guest will share his experiences as a professional who's worked for many years with older adults residing in nursing homes facing a wide variety of medical problems. Time will be reserved for Q&A from the audience. Before we start, I'd like to just read a little mini bio on Dr. Pace. Dr. Hugh Pates received his doctorate degree in 1970. He served as professor and Dean of Students at the University of California for 25 years. He's also served as president of the San Diego Psychological Association, the University City Community Association, University of California Retirees Association, and a board member of the California Psychological Association. For 20 years, Dr. Pate was an associate of Concept Healthcare Psychology Group, committed to serving the behavioral needs of patients in skilled nursing facilities. He continues in his professional psychology practice working with a variety of adult and older adult patients. Dr. Pate's articles on providing psychological interventions to meet the emotional and personal needs of seniors— have been published in a variety of magazines and journals. He has a passionate belief that each individual can live a very long life with vibrant quality and strong purposefulness to the end of life. Welcome, Dr. Pince. Glad to have you with us today.

Glad to be back with you, Joe, after 4 years and a different path. It's nice to be here. Yes, we have a very nice audience that have chosen to join us, and so we're very fortunate.

We have a nice live audience today. Typically our podcasts are recordings only, but this is a live audience, so we'll have an opportunity for some discussion afterwards.

Alive, uh, but lively also.

All right, I always like to open by asking my guests to tell us maybe the highlights of the journey that, that brought you to where you are today. You've gone down a lot of roads over the years, I know, but maybe the highlights of what brought you to where you are today.

Well, I would like to start with the highlight. After spending 26 years at the University of California in San Diego with young men and women trying to find their own identity and trying to find their path in life, I had the opportunity to retire, and I really wanted to retire, and mainly because I wanted to control my own time. I wanted to get up in the morning sometimes and say, "I have nothing to do today." "Oh, that's good. We'll figure it out as we go along." And I have found that to be a great blessing in retirement. And after I retired, I took a journey of 13 states in the United States, got in my car and said, "I want to see the country." And I wanted to visit all the state capitals in the United States. And eventually I got that done. And when I came back, I decided to spend a couple weeks sitting on the beach in La Jolla Shores. And I did that and contemplating my navel and other things and deciding, well, where do I go from here? And I happened to come across an article in one of the magazines I was reading and said that Senior Psychological Services was hiring therapists. And so I called up Senior Psychological Services, and there was Joe. And, um, I went in and interviewed, and they accepted me as a person that they could use to be able to serve the needs that they had. And so that's when I started my journey in being able to work with older adults. We had assignments to go to nursing homes And in the nursing homes, there was primarily aging folks, and it was a shock to me. I had not been in a nursing home before, and walking into a nursing home, I had a sinking feeling. Now here these folks are all in beds for the most part, and started to visit with them and found that for the most part they all had some form traumatic experience in their life before they became ill and wound up in the nursing home. The one aspect of the nursing home that was most difficult for me was the lack of contact these people had.

For—

they had 4 beds to a room, most of them on Medicare or Medi-Cal. They probably had a visitor maybe once a quarter, maybe once a month. They were all lonely. They were only a few feet apart and never talked to each other. They would go to— the only time that they would find themselves enjoying was going to their meals at the breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and they would be with 4 other people, and oftentimes they wouldn't say anything to each other. And so I thought, wow, I need to stay here and see if I can't could lift these people's spirits just a bit. And Joe had already had some outlines and some ideas about interventions we could make that would possibly be helpful and useful to these individuals. And so I started using those, and pretty soon I adapted to the environment and they adapted to me, and I found it was really a useful, helpful, and enjoying experience to work with these individuals. And then I began to think, you know, I'm getting older myself, and am I going to wind up in a place like this, or where am I going to be able to spend my later years? What am I going to do? So I decided that I was going to enter into a program of aging for myself. How is it that I'm going to be able to age successfully and enjoy aging myself? What, what am I going to do? I was happily married at the time. My wife and I were married for 49 years. Before she passed away from Alzheimer's, which is an aging disease. And the two most important women in my life, my mother and my wife, both died of Alzheimer's. So I became very connected to the aging process. So I set out a program for myself, and I decided that probably the most important part of aging is having good health. So I decided to start on a health program, and in that program I have incorporated— I walk every day for at least a mile, maybe a mile and a half or 2 miles. I spend some time, 15 minutes a day, meditating. I spend at least 20 minutes a day reading to keep my head going and clear, and I spend time investing in relationships. I think that relationships are going to sustain me, and I hope that I can sustain relationships. So, um, I talk to my son every day. I talk to my daughter about once a week. I have 5 grandchildren. I have one of my granddaughters living with me. Talk about being educated. She's, she's 23 at this time, and And then I have a grandson who is 12, and he's become a basketball player. And I used to play basketball, and he thinks I know something about it, which is really neat, you know. So I tell him a few things and he responds, 'Oh, Grandpa, I did that and it works.' I think that's just wonderful. And I also started out with a group of older men. We had 11 men that would meet at the local coffee shop every day from about 7:30 till about 10 o'clock, depending upon how we could stand each other. And, uh, but I thought, you know, this is really nice. These old guys, we have no other place to go, so we come and we join with each other and we talk about life. And there were veterans there, and there were a doctor there, and there was— it was a very enjoyable experience. And I thought, I'm going to do this as much as I can for the rest of my life. And so currently I'm a member of two groups that meet once a month. Uh, one is a group of my local San Diego Psychological Association. It's called a Committee on Aging. And in that particular group, we meet for an hour and a half. The first half is on learning or talking about strategies that we use in our practice with aging adults, and we bring up cases and talk about them, give each other advice. And the second half has to do with our personal lives. How are we doing ourselves? You know, we're helping other people, how are we doing? And so we give each other encouragement, we bring up problems that we need to solve. One guy said, you know, I just had an interesting experience that I read about this guy that was old, and his grandson came in with a bag of marbles. He said, "Grandpa, these are for you." He said, "What are you giving me a bag of marbles for?" He said, "Mom said you lost all yours." So we tell each other, keep each other informed on various kinds of what's happening in the age of aging. And the other group I am are former classmates that I went to school with. And in this group there are 8 of us. 4 of them are 90 or older, and we're talking about living to be 100. What we talk about is what's it like to be this age. We've never been this old before. What's it like? What do we get out of life? What is— what makes life important? What do we want to go on for? And So, I'll talk about that as we go along and some of the activities that we do. So, that is my aging school. And the other one that I think is important is finances and having money. I thought early on, if you don't have enough money, you're not going to be able to do much. So, fortunately, I had a consultant that put me on to an advisor that has been very successful for me. And so, That's a worry that I don't have that oftentimes in dealing with elderly they do. My dad used to— his greatest fear was he's going to run out of money before he ran out of days. And when he died, he left a little bit of money, but he still had a way to go. But he decided to die. He was 84 years old. I used to call him during the week and I'd say, how you doing, Dad? Okay. Got anything planned? No. Uh, are they treating you well? I guess so. He said, hey, I see— his name was Don— he said, Don, old Don wants to die. I said, can't help you with that. I hope you don't. Don't give me that crap. If I want to die, I'm going to die.

I said, okay.

And so one day my brother and my dad's sister came in to visit with him in the nursing home, and My— his youngest sister got up to leave to go to the bathroom, and he looked over at my brother and he took his hand and he said, 'I'm gonna go.' And he went. So if you want to die, there's a way to get there. If you want to live, we think there's a way to get there too. So we're going to talk about that today.

Thank you, thank you. You've outlined a lot of the strategies for living well, living longer. You're an honorary member of my Living to 100 Club, so I think you are showing great examples, great strategies. The social engagement, I think, is probably the most important ingredient. We know a lot of elements to living longer and fitness and diet and nutrition. But to me, social engagement is right up there at the top of the list. Networks, whatever's going on. So you're, you're the epitome, you're a great example of how to stay connected with friends, with support, with networks. And that's great. So tell us a little bit about your, your current work. Are you still working as a psychologist? I know part-time. Tell us a little bit about the practice. Types of patients you see, types of problems you help with?

Uh, well, uh, when the pandemic came, unfortunately for all of us, the nursing homes were not accepting my presence any longer because they didn't want me to bring something in or bring something out. So for 2 years, the practice was in hiatus. But during that time, another friend of mine had started a an organization called HELP. The idea was, her concept was for psychologists to go to the homes of elderly because the elderly had more difficulty finding transportation or getting someplace. And so her business was put on hold too because people did not want folks coming into their home with the possibility of contracting the COVID So we put a lot of effort into formulating telehealth, talking to people either on the telephone or by Zoom. So I had never thought about when I was younger that there would come a day when I would be in my slippers and my shorts and be able to do therapy with somebody out there on the— so, but it's important to me because I spent a lot of 32 years in school might as well know something and be able to utilize it in a way that may be helpful to someone else. So I keep 10 patients at this time, and each of them— all of them have— are aging. I have one patient that's 37, but all the others are 58 or older. And all of them at some time in their life have had some type of trauma. One woman was an adopted child. And when she would make a mistake, or when she was younger, her mother would sit her down in the chair and then make her get down on the floor, and she would drag her by her hair around the room. And when she would give her a bath, if she hadn't been good that day, she would hold her underwater until she could barely breathe, then she would let her up. And then if she did again something wrong, she'd put her in a closet for about 3 or 4 hours. And so she emerged out of that closet and had some difficulty in life, but eventually married, had 4 children. Her husband started to abuse one of her daughters, and she did not know about it. So the daughter and she are still separated in terms of why she didn't help at the time, but she has a son and a daughter that she has contact with. But she is dealing with enormous feelings of anger, hatred, frustration, disappointment, guilt, and depression. Another one of my patients was a veteran of the Vietnam War, and his— he has PTSD, wakes up often with terrible sights. And he started out because the fact he said, you know, I came face to face with 3 young Vietnamese. I shot them, killed them right there with my machine gun. He said, I've never forgotten that. He said, when I go into a shopping center like this, if I come across an Asian person, I freeze. I get real nervous, whether it be a man or a woman, and all the thoughts of that particular moment come flooding back to me. And he's been married and has two children. And he said, no one really understands what that's been like or what I've been through. I said, I understand that, that's why I'm here. So, uh, we are in consultation over those issues. And lastly, one other patient that I have is schizophrenic and was born that way. And as he was growing up, people put a lot of pressure on him. You could do better, you don't need to be that way. And so he always felt very inadequate, very unable to adapt and be part of society, and very difficult to be able to concentrate for any period of time. So he's never able to have a work life at all. He was never able to be engaged in any kind of a relationship with a woman. And so now he masturbates and he still feels very guilty. About that because he never had any sexual experiences. And so he feels very lonely and still feels very apart from society. But he's been taking his medication. He has terrible temper, and he would try to walk the street, and if a car came up and stopped, you give him the finger, and then he'd scream at the guy for upsetting him. What's the matter with you? You know that Poor guy in the car, I don't know what he thought, you know, he stopped. So, uh, we— lately he has not had— the last 2 weeks he had no explosions of anger. Uh, he's been going to the library, he's been associating in his Starbucks every morning with coffee, talking to people. And so, uh, fortunately I came into his life at a time that was helpful and useful. So those are some of the patients that I'm seeing.

Yeah, thank you. You know, I'd like to talk about successful aging and one of the ingredients for successful aging. And to me, you know, living to 100, it's a nice goal, uh, living to 100. Maybe it's not in the cards for everybody, but I say you can stay positive while trying. But my thing is Successful aging means dealing with whatever comes along, whatever those challenges are that we encounter, whatever those bumps and potholes. I always say it's not a smooth road. There's always going to be some challenges that we have to deal with. So I'd like to ask you, Hugh, what, what are some of the common kind of challenges that you've seen in your older adult patient caseloads and one of the challenges, you mentioned a few cases, but maybe others that are as common or more common?

Well, I think the major challenge to life, there are 4, I think. One is health. I think far and away being able to deal with one's health, the unexpected of our life, I never thought I'd get sick or get ill, and I wasn't for a long time. And the only thing I had was bad knees. And went in one time to see the physician, and he said to me, he said, would you think about having both your knees replaced at the same time? I said, yeah, because he looked up at the chart with the x-rays that you don't have a leg, good leg to stand on. That's good news. So, uh, So I said, yeah, let's do it. So we were in the operating room for 6 hours, and one physician worked on one leg and the other worked on the other. And, uh, and so I really went after healing. I think that's the part. The part is one, getting ill. The second part is how do we heal? How do we get better? And when I was out there walking in my painful knees, another fellow that had operation the same time said, well, I can't I can't do it. It's too painful. You know, I, I, I got to— and took him forever to get better, and it took me 6 weeks. So it depends upon the— not only getting ill unexpectedly, but how do we accept the illness, how do we work with it, and how do we get better. And the important part is I want to get better. Next question is what for. So I think it's important that individuals have a reason to get better. The second thing I think is death. As we get older, all of a sudden people start dropping off. I was telling you about this group that we had last Thursday, a week ago Thursday. He was the organizer of our group, and we had a great discussion on various aids of health. And next day we got an email from his wife. He had died of a heart attack. That night. So how do you deal with that? How do you have, you know, vital and lively contact with somebody else? And then there's relationships. Sometimes we get a little older, when somebody says the wrong thing at the wrong time, and, you know, I ain't talking to you for the rest of my life. What did I say? You know, why? You, you should know by now. You're old enough.

Yeah.

And suddenly that relationship is untethered, and it's a real surprise. Like, what am I going to do? How am I going to handle that? How am I going to get back with this? And the other aspect, I think, is the finances. Individuals, you know, sometime in life, long ago, you could go to the movie for a quarter, and now you can't get in for less than $10 if you go to a good theater. And so it changed. And to be able to grow up and change with the times of dealing with money is a real challenge, I think, in life. You know, how much do I have? How much can I spend? And then where do I invest it? Or do I invest it? And if I invest— I have had friends that invested and lost a lot of money, and they're gun-shy now. And so they're holding on to money. And so it's, it's a real challenge in life. And how am I going to survive? So those, from my experience, Joe, are the major challenges that we as aging folks face.

Yes, so health, death, relationships, finances. And again, I always ask the question, how do we understand these events? How do we explain these events that occur in our lives? And how how we explain them is going to color how well we cope with them. If we, you know, perceive an event like the loss of a close friend— we just had coffee yesterday, now I learned that he's passed away— how do we explain that to ourselves? We can do it in a positive way or in a less than positive way, and that's going to influence how well we cope with that loss. Similarly, for a health event, a fall, tripping over a curb, the person says, well, I'm just getting too old, I better be careful, I shouldn't be outside anymore, maybe I need to walk, or maybe I need— yeah, maybe we do, sometimes we need these aids. Color how well we cope, how well we manage it. So these are 4 themes, important themes: health, death— how do we understand death in our lives and what does that mean when someone leaves us— and the relationships, as we already talked about, the social engagement. To me, that's number 1, that connection. And fourthly, finances. Sometimes we have some choices over that, sometimes we don't. The person I'm always concerned about people, as you said, there's a concern about running out of funds to, you know, stay. I'm living in a retirement community. I don't know how long we'll be able to afford this. So again, to me, successful aging means staying positive no matter what gets in the way, no matter what the events are. And again, how we explain it, how we interpret it, we can take a negative turn explanation, we can take a positive spin on it. So that's really key. Hugh, let me ask you, what are some ways that you recommend people can deal with some of these physical setbacks, personal setbacks, financial? What, what kind of recommendations can you offer to deal with some of these very real challenges?

Well, as a psychologist, I think that most of our lives begin in our head. And I think the way we talk to ourselves has significant influence throughout our lives. Um, and I think being able to somehow give— reel our thoughts back in, either from the past or for the future, and say, well, what about now? You know, I used to have a habit of going to bed and I was always planning my next day. And I don't know how many people I talked to each night. And then one day I woke up, I said, you know, these people aren't even here. They don't even listen to me. Why don't you go to sleep? And so I thought that's a good idea, you know, to— because we do have— I do anyhow. We have a tendency to talk to people in our head about all kinds of things over which we have no control. You know, we want to change their behavior. We want to be able to give them some advice. We want them to get to know us a little bit better. And then you stop and say, but they're not here. What can you do? Well, what I can do is focus on where I'm at right here, right now. And, uh, that's oftentimes— there are people in our lives with whom we have had disappointments, discouragement, we get angry. So we go and talk to these people and tell them how angry we are. I said, huh, what good does that do? It doesn't do any— it always gets my heart rate going up, but it doesn't change anything. And so I think the important part is, what can I change about what's happened? What power do I have? When my friend passed away, uh, Jim, I was very sad and lost. And then I thought, what can I do? What I can do is remember what a great guy he was and what contributions he made to me and to other people. And I'm sorry that he's gone, but I am very grateful for having had him in my life. The other day when I stumbled and dove into the cement, I'll tell you this story. What happened there, one of my friends was 92 years old. He's coming to visit me because he's coming to make money at the racetrack Del Maro. So he had come down and I'm an expert at horse racing, by the way. If you need tips, just let me know.

That's the truth.

I go every day if I can. And so he got off the plane and I'll talk about resilience about him maybe a little bit further on. And I went to reach out my hand to greet him. Boom! I went down. Fortunately, I bounced. Nothing happened. There were no lost consciousness or anything. And so all of a sudden there was this phalanx of police persons and health officials. I wanted to get up, put a bandaid on, and go on. They said, "No, man, you have a hole in your head." I said, "Really? So?" I got a hole in my head, and so you need to go to the, uh, to the emergency room. I didn't want to go to the emergency room.

I felt fine.

But what am I going to do about it? Am I going to argue with these people? Am I going to tell them, don't tell me what to do, I know? I got in and went to the emergency room.

Yeah, right.

But there was my 92-year-old friend. Standing there, my car was right there, just multiple parked with others. So what, what, 92? And I, so I said to the, uh, I said to the fireman, I said, you got to take him up to the motel. So I can't do that. I said, well, he can't drive a car, he just came from out of town. He said, what is it? I said, he's 92. He said, does he have a driver's license? Yeah, well, he still does.

Amazing.

So what I said— so I started to contemplate, you know, what am I going to do about this? So I can't do anything. I just got to let it go, yeah, because I need to take care of myself. And so sure enough, my 92-year-old friend got in my car, you know, go— I said, how did you get there? He said, well, uh The police person gave me some instructions, and then the other guy got in the car and pressed your button that gives me the lady that talks to you, tells you where to go. And so he went to the hotel, no reservations. No reservation? We made them 3 months ago. No reservation. So I, I didn't know all this until later. So they said, what am I going to do? Got in the car and Pressed the lady, went to another hotel. 92 years old with a cane. I'll tell you about this terrible— and so what am I going to do? So I put my son in charge to take care of it. Called her from the hospital. I said, how you doing? For an old duffer, I'm doing pretty good. Hearing that voice is very consoling to me. But in those incidents, what can we do? I can be I can be upset about it, I can blame myself for not watching out what I'm doing about it. I could go— just let it go and somehow it works out. And so when we have difficult— whatever we can amend, whatever we can write, whatever we can do for our health, we do. We can't do anything about it, I think it's important to be able to accept what our limitations are. And let go and, and go on. I had— when I was young and I would get in difficult situations, that I would imagine myself is— remember, we're young, we used to go to the fair or to a, uh, some type of activity. We had little kids, we got balloons, and what a wonderful thing that was to have that balloon and walk it. And all of a sudden the balloon would go.

What can you do?

You know, blew away. My mother would say, you can't catch it, it's gone. Why don't you watch it? And I did. And so I used to think that one of the ways that I find dealing with those types of concerns and questions that I have is I put them in a balloon, take them outside and let them go and watch them. So there are various ways that we have of coping or dealing with situations, and that's mine.

That's good. Yes. Yeah, that just go back to the self-talk that goes on in our heads, and there's so much that, um, you know, we can solve and so much that we can kind of create more problems with by that thinking going on in our head. A lot of it is What are we perceiving and how are we explaining? Are we looking for the positives or are we looking for the negatives? You know, the old example is the glass half full or is the glass half empty. I say if it's an 8-ounce glass with 4 ounces of water, both half full and half empty. So you decide. When I do a presentation in front of a large group, I'll divide it into right half and left half and they say everybody on the right side. I want you to put your optimism hat on. You're the optimist. I want you to look around the room and find everything that's good about it. Maybe the sunlight, the furniture, the plants look healthy, whatever. Find everything that's good. Okay, then everybody on the other side, you're the pessimist. Put your pessimist hat on and look for everything that's wrong. Maybe stains on the carpet, marks on the walls, maybe a broken lamp or fixture. And we reconvene after a minute and I ask for feedback and we get the positives and we get the negatives. And my point at the end of the exercise is that it's the same room. What are we looking for? We're looking for what's good about it. We'll find it. We're looking for things that are wrong. We'll find that too. So that's a lot of what, what you're saying, Hugh, that some things are under our control and we can manage that. And some things are out of our control and we cannot manage that. I think it's important to recognize that we spend a lot of time worrying about things that are not under our control, and it creates a lot of tension and frustration, anxiety. So being able to discern the difference between what I can control, like attitudes and thoughts and feelings and kindness and acceptance— those are under our control. Things that are not under our control are losing the balloon when you're a child, or saying the wrong thing to someone 10 years ago, or, um, maybe, you know, maybe gas prices or food prices. These are not under our control. So let's recognize what we can control and what we cannot control. And I think that's an important ingredient to keeping that tension and frustration. And so many things we worry about that we just don't have any control over. I mean, a lot of terrible things going on with the weather and flooding and fires, and yeah, it's terrible stuff, but that's not something we can take on and try to manage ourselves. So that's, that's a good point. And managing the anger, I, you know, I, I think that's so important and not let— we have to respect the emotions, right? The anger, the sadness, but we don't let it control us, and there's a difference. We respect the feelings, we respect the unpleasant feelings, but we don't let it take over. So that's a good recommendation to you, and, you know, positive regards for somebody who's taken out of our life and someone who's not around anymore, and recognizing the good, the positives, what we learned, how we enjoyed that relationship. These are, these are important ingredients.

I'll tell a short story. I do go to the racetrack, and often, and a while ago last year, there was two young— two men sitting in front of me, and they decided that they were going to bet more than they probably could afford. And this one fellow had money on a particular horse, number 7, and number 7 was ahead coming down the stretch, and he was so happy and cheering, and all of a sudden two other horses passed him by. He had a hat on. He threw his hat down. He started to yell at the jockey and the horse. And his friend said, George, George, George, the race is over. It's done. I know, but that SOB, but I don't care what they— he can't do it anymore. George, I can't. Finally he said, George, if you don't settle down, I'm leaving. George, the race is over. Go on to the next one. That's how life is sometimes. That's a good life lesson. My horse won, so I felt okay about it.

But the race was over, then you won too.

That's right.

You let go of that.

So I let go of the money too, unfortunately.

Well, that's great. So just one more question about resilience and, you know, the ability to get back up after we're knocked down, right? You know, we're knocked down on the mat and we get back up in the boxing match. And that's such an important ingredient for staying positive and not being weighed down. I think you've touched on resilience in a lot of your explanations today, but any thoughts on resilience? Where, where does it come from? How do we tap into it? What can— where do we get more of it? What do you think?

I think resilience primarily comes from encouragement, that somewhere along in our life there were traumas or bad experience or difficult experiences, and somebody supported us and helped us, gave us encouragement, and we were able to overcome it. Uh, what is this fellow, 92 years old, that I was talking about? The last 2 years he's been very interested because He was driving down a hill to his house and his brakes quit. And so he had two choices: one, to go over a hill and down the hill, or go into a tree. He decided to go into a tree, and the bag didn't inflate, so his foot bent, his chest went into the— so he spent about 3 weeks in the hospital recovering. He came out, he said, I'm ready to go. He came out and about 2 months later, he had a gallbladder. Went in the hospital, they took out his gallbladder. And then he went to the hospital to be examined, and while he was in the hospital, he slipped on the terrazzo, broke his hip sliding into his chair. I said, how you doing now? He said, oh, I'm doing fine. I'm coming back. I'm coming. Resilience. And I said, what in the world? How do you do that? How do you keep coming back? He said, my dad told me one time when I was young, he said, don't let the bastards get you down. He said, so anything comes into my life, I'm not letting them get me down. I'm coming back. And so here he was coming back, 92 years old, in an automobile. So it's partly his practice, partly it's experience, partly it's a willingness and a wanting to. I want to go on, but I don't care. He walks with a cane. I said, what's a good cane? He keeps the snakes away. And so it's, it's what we do. Like Joe said, it's in our head, it's in our bodies, it's primarily in our willingness to be able to come back and do it. And this is helpful if we've got a reason for it or somebody to come back for. But even if we don't, if you want to go on, we can.

You know, it's always there, I maintain, right?

It's—

we might feel like it's gone or it's blocked, we've lost that drive, we've lost that fire, but I maintain as long as we're taking a breath, we still have that ability to get back up off the mat. And I saw so many patients in the nursing homes that, you know, would throw their hands up and say, I'm done, I can't go to physical therapy, I can't handle anymore. And other patients with the same problem, maybe a stroke or a hip fracture, they would say, okay, I've got to dig deep and I've got to go to rehab and I've got to fight, get back on my feet. So what's the difference? It is that resilience. It is that fire that, uh, and we all have, I think we all have inside of us. So even though it feels like it's gone sometime, or I, um, it's, you know, emptied out, I think if we dig deep, it's there. When we find that courage and that strength and that fire to keep moving. So, Hugh, thanks so much for this interview, and let's open it up for questions or comments. We have some time to address this.

I'm a member of two discussion groups, women who have been career women, and now they're all retired, and frequently One of them will comment that they don't have a purpose, either because they're no longer working, or their spouse for whom they care is no longer alive, and grandchildren are all gone, and all of you can imagine.

I hear it often.

So how do you address the sense at this age of being purposeless?

Well, the idea is the opposite of purposelessness is having a purpose. And one of the things I ask is, if you had— if you were young, you know, if you were still had your health and you still— if you had a choice of what you would like to do in life, what would you choose? And oftentimes they come up, well, I would like to take a trip, or I would like to take care of kids, or I would like— they have People have fantasies about what they would have liked to have done. And so I said, well, what keeps you from doing that now? How can we work together to be able to create the opportunity for you to give it a go? Some people come back to school, and some of you have come back to classes. You know, what for? I want to learn. So you're motivated. It's the opportunity to find a purpose, and I think individuals can find it. I think part of what they're asking for is sympathy. Oh, you poor thing. God, you don't have any purpose in life. That's, that's awful. You know, I feel so sorry for you. Well, okay, that's one thing. They do get a little attention and some, and some— but the other end is, you know, what can, what can we do? I, I'm kind of an admirer of the former President Obama. And here's a young man that grew up without a father and a mother part-time, was Black. And so he decided to run for office, and they said, oh God, you can't, you can't make it, you're too young and you're too Black, and what are you going to do? So he ran for president. And what inspired me about him was his saying, yes we can, yes I can. And, uh, and I think about us, you know, when we think about, you know, I'm really disturbed and upset with somebody that has hurt me. Can I forgive this person? I can't forgive this person, it's too hard. But yes, I can.

I can forgive this person.

I don't have a purpose in life, I don't have a meaning anymore, everything's gone away from me. Can I get restored? Can I get active? Can I become involved? Yes, I can. We talk about individuals that are coming back from being injured. That's right, it hurts too much, I can't go through that pain. Yes, we can. As we get older and we think about ourselves, can we be resilient? Can I forgive? Can I get healthy? Can I be involved with other people? Can I live a life that is rewarding, fulfilling to the end of my life? Yes, we can.

That's very good, Hugh. Thank you, thank you. Big points. I would just add, I, I call it starting new chapters. Things happen in our lives, and, you know, maybe it's a desired change, or maybe it's an unwanted change, maybe a divorce, or maybe downsizing. Giving up the car keys. We have to look at starting a new chapter. It's another milestone. And maybe now I'm a widow, or I'm a widow, I'm going to be looking at my future, you know, looks dark without my spouse, but I'm going to open a new chapter. And I, I always encourage people to think about knocking on doors because we have to go after these things. We can't wait for people to bring them to us. And I say we have to be the knocker and not wait for somebody to knock on our doors and say, here, I'm going to help you. Just quickly, I was doing a class like this online and someone, an older gentleman, said, you know, I keep hearing about the golden years, golden years this, golden years that. Everybody talks about the golden years. I'm still waiting. So I said, okay. You've got to be the golden years. You've got to be whatever you think the golden years are to you. You've got to become that. You become the change that you want. So you have to go after whatever those golden years are. You have to want them instead of waiting for somebody to come along.

Yeah, yeah. I think I've answered this question from what things that you were saying, but For many, many years, people have said that NRUs, that's one of the things, statistically speaking, people who are married or with a partner or live with someone who lives in a community do better, or have a job, or an animal. Or is it just, just, is it the mindset that, you know, that you really want to make yourself space, you know, your life filled with these things on your phone. Is there a statistic that people that, you know, live in a community, live together, do better?

Oh yes.

Oh, thank God.

There are people that are even having animals that they really treasure. Yes, they live longer, but the important part is they live better. They have more higher quality of life. And the main reason for that is because they feel valued. For all of us, where do we get value? On what value are we? And if a puppy loves me, or a cat, that's wonderful. If my son really cares for me, it's wonderful. That's the really important part. And so I think that it is difficult, I think, to live alone and individuals. I know individuals that do, particularly men. More bachelors tend to get encrusted themselves in their lives. Good thing that there is Meals on Wheels, otherwise they'd starve to death. The, uh, but I think it, it is just like Joe said, it's the mindset. And so some, it takes a push sometimes, but there are opportunities available to all of us if and when we want to take care But it's, yeah, so I don't know if I answered your question. I had a lady, 87 years old, and said, what do you attribute to your good health? She said, well, she said, I get up, I get dressed, and I get out. Yes, a couple of things that you said kind of validated an attitude thought that I had when I first was diagnosed with COPD. I felt, uh, something was taking away from me. Yeah, I used to be a harmonica player. I can't do that really that much. Uh, and I said, my— I remember my grandmother saying every time something would happen to her that she couldn't control, she would sigh and say What are you going to do? And from that, I understood it to be you get busy living or you get busy dying, one of the two. So that leads me to what can I do with this? Oh well, I know I have people who can't go anywhere because they don't have portable concentrators, so I have those, and then this gets me farther, and it's looking for how I intellectually and research how I can get past something that seems to be standing in my way physically. Then you got to do that psychologically with the laws of attraction.

That's what I—

you just— it's got to do work on all levels. Well, you're here.

That's why.

That's a great statement. Well, that you got up, you got out, you and you're here. I congratulate you. Well, it's her. And I like the way you take compliments.

We have a couple minutes left. Any other comments?

I think all this should be taken in moderation because you can also do too much. Sure.

Yeah, a little moderation goes a long way, right? Even with our diets. And people say you don't need all these supplements if we're having, you know, a moderate amount of fats and carbohydrates and sugar. So it's all in moderation, but I think you're right, that's an important thing.

It's a good comment, thank you.

Yes, um, you mentioned faith. It doesn't matter what church you go to, but relationship with the higher up, you know, talk about, I think that's very important. Doesn't stop here.

Very good.

Because otherwise is not something to look forward to. Whatever you call it, for me, like stepping on the bug. That's it. I just don't talk about purpose.

Thank you for the comment. That's very thoughtful.

Thank you. Doesn't matter what you do.

Yeah, that's important.

I agree.

I just want to say one other word about when you were talking about the COPD diagnosis. And I think it's, you know, it comes down to like starting new chapters. We have to create another role first, another self-definition. We're not defined by who we were yesterday. We can create a new script. We can create a new role, almost like we have a blank screen and we can put whatever we want. On the screen, that can be our new character. We're not limited by who we were 10 years ago or whatever our profession was. So that's the beauty, I think, of staying positive and, you know, being looking at the upside to aging because we have so much more opportunity. And, you know, the, the energy, the, the wisdom, the tolerance, the sense of humor, all the positives that we have. This will serve us well in our senior years. So we can create whatever script we want. It's our story. We write whatever story. So thank you all very much for being here.

Thank you for coming.

Yes. We appreciate you working with us.

And be courageous. It takes a lot of courage to move on with life.

Thank you very much.

He didn't know any persisting.

There you go.

But he tried all the way.

Well, you're all here. I really appreciate your taking the time, putting in the effort and the energy. That's a statement of who you are. Thank you so much.

Thank you all. Thank you, Hugh. Thank you, Dr. Cates.

Hi everyone, this is Meredith from the Senior Fitness with Meredith podcast where I discuss all things for seniors, from fitness, your health and wellness journeys, how to be all over strong and beyond. I also have my mini podcast called Motivation with Meredith. It's a great quick motivational pick-me-up me up for your days. Join me. Listen now. Search for Senior Fitness with Meredith on your favorite podcast platform.