When to Care?
Occasionally, I take inventory of things in my life. Relationships, objects, time-consumers, etc. The older I become, I tend to value some things more and devalue others.
Clothing is something I value differently now than when I was younger. Before you get the wrong idea — I’m not talking about joining naked yoga. I wear a pair of 7 year old leather dress shoes that have just started to break-in. I do not go to the store to buy a cheap pair every 6 months.
I’ve started to value deep relationships more than surface ones. I’ve realized the scarcity of time, especially now that I have three young children. Our finite disposition does not lend itself to spending time as if it is some endless resource. I’ve realized that I need to grow certain relationship more than others. It is a hard truth — I do not want to be rude, I just don’t want to be a bad steward of my time; wasting it on endless speculation or shooting the breeze without having a end in mind.
The time you spend to deepen relationships in your life is one of the best investments you can make.
I’ve recently started to engage in a project centered around care for aging loved ones, and a question arose: “When is the right time to start care for your elders?” What is obvious to me now wasn’t at first. It seems as if we live in a culture that believes our responsibility as a son or grandson is more about preventing falls and less about engaging in the relationship. Conversations are only necessary when you need to discuss the “next steps;” as if there is some threshold that you reach, and then you start engaging with your loved one. You dread that day, and when it comes, you grit your teeth and bear it.
Inevitably, we value relationships more after the opportunity has passed. A friend of mine recently lost his wife. By statistical standards, she died early. The advice my friend gave me was to take advantage of each moment — because there will be a day when the opportunity has passed. You cannot reverse time, nor can you makeup for lost time. You can only take advantage of the time you have because the days are numbered.
Life is hard, no question about it. The reason we do not make time for deep relationships is that we do not value them enough. That is, we perceive spending time with parents or grandparents as less valuable than other endevours. We weigh the proposition, and conclude: “I ain’t got time for that.”
The time you spend to deepen relationships in your lives is one of the best investments you can make. You will be surprised that you do not know the person as well as you thought, and how much insight they will have into your life. Especially from those who have so much life experience.
It is not always easy to engage with our loved ones. My company is working to use technology to help remove barriers that stifle engagement. Kaloop enables family members to engage in caring for their aging loved ones, using smart-home sensors to watch movement of doors and other key objects in the home in order to passively (and affordably) monitor in-home patterns of their elder. As of this writing, we are currently accepting beta users at a discounted cost.
