The Meaning of Life

Questions: 1.Imagine that you do not have long to live. Write down what youve learned about the meaning of life based upon your present age. 2.Ask the older adult participating with you on this project, what he/she has learned about the meaning of life. based upon his/her current age. 3.Compare your answers and share what you have learned from this exercise.Incorporate what you have learned from your readings as well regarding what you have learned. Answer: Realization of the researcher The researcher belongs to the stage six, as per the theory of Erik Erikson. In this stage, the researcher realized that it is fuzzier than the stages of childhood. Having a clear view of his personality, the researcher felt that he could perform more intimacy at this stage to act as a lover, friend, and as a participant in society. The researcher also realized that he/she has no sense of community as he/she had to travel a lot to fulfill his/her career demands. A presence of hatefulness is also present at this age, which is called exclusion. For example, if a person is derived from love, friendship, and community, he will develop certain hatefulness. Response from an older participator The participator who is working with the researcher in the project is older than him, and he/she belongs to stage eight of Erik Eriksons age development theory. After interviewing him, the researcher found that, at this stage, a sense of biological disability is felt by him. His body can no longer do everything it used to. He also has some old age illness like arthritis, diabetes and heart problem. The fear of death is also there in his mind as his friends are dying, relatives are dying. Some other things that he is feeling to be most important characteristics to follow to live a life happily are gratitude, integrity, wisdom, family, peace, connection, creativity, justice, appreciation, balance, and respect for each other. He also stated that religion has helped him/her a lot while fighting with the problems of aging by reducing the stress of illness, by providing a sense of meaning to life, by offering social networks and activities. For example, at least, 60% people in the US said that religion has helped them to deal with their aging problems. He also mentioned that participating in intellectual and political leisure activities have proactive benefits during the later life. Combination of information From the responses of the older person who is participating with the researcher in the research and the researcher it is clear that people from different stages of age carry different realization about life (Gunalda Merril, 2014). The researcher belongs from the lower stage of age bracket, so his realization is comparatively short and has limited boundaries. Most of the realization of the researcher focuses on the social relationship and personal relationship (Kubler Kessler, 2012). On the other hand, the realization of the elder person is wide and has no boundaries. The elder person belongs to the eight and last stage of age bracket, so he is erudite and knowledgeable (Oh et al. 2012). He has proper knowledge of the things a person should follow to lead a proper life. He also understands that religion is the only tool, which can help an elder person to cope up with the problems of aging where for the researcher, being a younger person has a minimum place of religion in his life (S ood Gupta, 2014). References Gunalda, J. C., Merrill, W. H. (2014). Homage: Education and Life Lessons as Taught by Dr James D. Hardy.Journal of surgical education,71(4), 641-644. Kubler-Ross, E., Kessler, D. (2012).Life lessons: How our mortality can teach us about life and living. Simon and Schuster. Oh, D. H., Dassanayake, M., Bohnert, H. J., Cheeseman, J. M. (2012). Life at the extreme: lessons from the genome.Genome Biol,13(3), 241. Sood, S., Gupta, R. (2014). Subjective Happiness as Mediator between Personal Growth Initiative and Life Satisfaction in Adolescents.International Journal of Psychological Studies,6(4), p89