Working with Seniors: Health, Financial, and Social Issues

Chapter 5: The Experience of Aging

Hope is a waking dream.

-- Aristotle

A woman we will call Susan told the following dream to gerontologist and philosopher Harry Moody. After a decade of careful planning, Susan and her husband had recently moved to a luxury retirement community in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

I dreamed I was back in high school at a dance and it was time to go home. I needed a ride and I went around frantically asking everyone I knew for help. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t get a ride home.

After waking, Susan realized that the dream was a strong message to acknowledge that she and her husband had made a bad decision when they moved to Hilton Head. Soon after her dream they relocated to Asheville, North Carolina, and to a very different kind of community, where they have lived happily for many years. They fulfilled their dream of retirement. Their clue to life planning came to them in the form of a dream.

Introduction

Even with careful thought and rational planning, people may not fully understand their own goals or sources of satisfaction. In this case, Susan felt dissatisfaction, but only through a powerful dream did she realize that she and her husband needed to change course.

Prior to Susan’s dream, she and her husband had spent several months pretending that they loved their new home. We know from cognitive psychology that people often rationalize their choices and resist acknowledging contradictory feelings aroused by their choices. Interestingly enough, psychologists have also learned that presenting more information doesn’t necessarily result in better decisions (Schwartz, 2004). In fact, just getting a lot of information can actually paralyze choice and result in procrastination.