Written by / First Psychology Writers
Editor / Tommy
With the accumulation of personal life experience, I have a new interpretation of the classic literary work "Journey to the West".
I often think:
Why are the demons and monsters in the play so obsessed with eating Tang monk meat?
Translating this question into reality, we know that immortality is not yet possible, but the attempt to prolong life never stops.
With the improvement of the quality of modern life, the enhancement of health awareness and the advancement of medical technology, people's average life expectancy has been greatly extended, and society has begun to enter the aging stage.
According to research,
Seven percent of the country's population is over the age of 65, marking the country's entry into an aging society.
China met this standard in 1999, and this ageing population means that young people today are under more pressure, especially those with multiple elderly people in their families to support.
Hiring a caregiver is also worrying about not being able to trust it, and taking care of it by yourself consumes a lot of time and energy, and the financial burden is quite heavy.
Psychologists have given the exact answer, and if you think about it, it is:
In the field of psychology, research does exist on this.
Developmental psychologist Jean Piaget explores the rationality of human lifespan in his Introduction to the Epistemology of Occurrence, emphasizing the intersection of biological and social logic.
Through his research, Piaget believed that the ideal life expectancy of human beings should be between 70 and 80 years old.
This is because at this age, older people are usually in good health and have clear thinking.
With the improvement of infrastructure and the increase of activity places for the elderly, the elderly often do not need their children to spend much energy to take care of them.
Naturally, when people reach the age of antiquity, their pursuit of fame and fortune usually decreases and seeks more spiritual comfort.
At this stage, the children of the elderly are usually stable, have started a family, and their lives are calmer, so they will have more time to take care of the daily needs of the elderly.
Once, an elderly man over 100 years old expressed his regret in an interview, he felt that he had lived too long and witnessed the death of many relatives, including his own children and grandchildren, which filled his life with sadness and pain.
Today, he feels very lonely and has difficulty finding the motivation to continue living.
The development of life consists of three stages: physical maturity, personal growth, and the establishment of social relationships.
There are flowers and red carpets on the road of life, as well as mud and challenges, all of which drive our growth and inadvertently help us build meaning in life.
When we are young, we have an uninhibited soul and a free heart, grit our teeth, make unremitting efforts for our ideals, forge ahead bravely in applause, or forge ahead in challenges.
Whether it is the joy of success or the regret of failure in the end, it is all worth cherishing.
As we experience more, our lives gradually stabilize, our physical strength is no longer as abundant as when we were younger, our minds tend to be calmer, and it is difficult to concentrate as much as we used to.
In this case, especially for the elderly, choosing to retire seems to be a more appropriate decision.
For the elderly who are over seventy, they tend to experience psychological aging, which to some extent marks a person's true aging.
Some scholars even see mental aging as an "accelerator" on the road to death.
These changes are gradually manifesting themselves and affecting their daily lives.
Although Jean Piaget proposed the ideal life expectancy of a person from the perspective of developmental psychology, in reality, not everyone's life expectancy can match his predictions.
Some older people who have been physically active and eat healthy for a long time are physically stronger, so they may live longer accordingly.
However, when you enter the age of 70, your body functions gradually deteriorate and your cells age, so even if you are physically strong, you will inevitably encounter diseases.
Some elderly people may suffer from some common geriatric diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia around the age of 60.
Although these conditions can be controlled by medical means, there are some diseases that are difficult to control.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the German physician Alois Alzheimer first observed a strange phenomenon:
A 51-year-old patient named Auguste Deter exhibited incomprehensible patterns of behavior, with her short-term memory fading rapidly and many of her behaviors losing their logic.
Alzheimer's studied a number of patients who showed similar symptoms based on this condition, and in 1906 he publicly described the disease.
In honor of Alzheimer's contributions, the brain disease was named "Alzheimer's disease."
With today's significant improvement in medical and technological technology, Alzheimer's disease has become one of the diseases of widespread concern worldwide.
As of 2015, about 30 million people worldwide are living with Alzheimer's disease, and these patients are generally over the age of 65, which is extremely disadvantageous for the elderly population.
Life is full of unpredictable factors, and we always encounter something that happens suddenly.
Sometimes, an unexpected illness strikes and catches people off guard.
The topic of death should not be deliberately avoided, and the purpose of discussing death is to better face life and cherish the present.
Although time is an abstract concept, life is indeed a finite journey, what we can do is to seize the present, make our life as beautiful as possible, and finally welcome the end of life with pride.
The End -
The First Psychological Writing Group | A group of young people who like to look up at the stars
Keywords in this article: death, psychology
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