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A lesson in empathy

Participants in the Through Other Eyes workshop had to work through a number of tasks with several age related handicaps in order to better understand some of the difficulties of growing old.

Photo: Darren Lum

Lance Crossley

Wednesday, April 20, 2005 – The Haliburton Echo

Local News - Uncomfortable. Irritable. And a little grumpy. Those were my initial feelings after participating in "Through Other Eyes", a two-hour workshop aimed at giving volunteers first-hand experience at what daily existence is like for seniors and people with disabilities.

The workshop, staged by Community Care last Wednesday morning, is essentially an exercise in empathy. Participants are asked to burden themselves with various accessories that emulate dysfunctions that come with aging and then to carry out a number of simple tasks with their newly impaired selves.

First, to give me a more cumbersome body, there was the five-pound weight strapped to my left ankle, complimented by a slightly lighter weight on my right wrist. Then a bright orange water wing on my upper left arm to simulate rheumatism. Two ear plugs to deafen sounds. Two pairs of latex gloves to deaden sensation. A pair of blurry goggles to give me cataracts. And the final accent to my transformation: an adjustable cane.

Granted, as was suggested by workshop trainer Monica Jensen, only one per cent of the population over 65 will be afflicted with all of these disabilities simultaneously, but even those who are partially suffering don’t have the luxury of shedding their disguise when the lesson’s over.

In my group there are two other women who are given the same disabilities, except instead of cataracts, one has tunnel vision and the other macular degeneration, the latter of which creates dark blotches in your field of vision. My cataracts, which blur everything, effectively render me useless for many of my group’s activities, such as finding a newspaper and reading the weather page. So tunnel vision and I have to rely on macular degeneration to tell us the news.

At one of the first stations we are told to do up two buttons on a dress shirt. Seems simple enough, but the shirt is white, as are the buttons, and my cataracts don’t allow me to discern the contrast. Even when I do locate them, the lack of sensation in my hands makes it difficult to put the button through the slit. I do one button up and tell my partners that I did both. They can’t see it anyway.

A number of supposedly simple tasks follow: picking up a deck of cards and finding the Queen of Hearts, finding two buttons of the same colour in a can of assorted buttons, finding two paperclips of the same colour and trying to link them together. At one point I have to open a jar, which would have been easier had the trainer not come and taped together my thumb and two fingers to give me arthritis.

After performing these tasks I finally understand what Carol Duncan, an 81-year-old disabled senior, told us in the group discussion afterward: "Don’t do for seniors what they can do for themselves."

Duncan has been a paraplegic since she was three years old because of a bout with polio, and in her advanced years has acquired cataracts, arthritis, and two hearing aids.

It’s not that seniors don’t need help -- I certainly needed it when I was buttoning up the shirt – it’s just that you don’t want to derail their considerable efforts during the undertaking. In other words, for me, finding the Queen of Hearts in the deck of cards was an engrossing event. It took sustained focus to complete. I had no doubt that I could eventually do it, but it would have somewhat annoyed me if someone took the cards from me half way through and stole the momentum I had built up toward my goal. That’s why you see old ladies getting angry with young men who forcefully take their arm to guide them across the street. One has to carefully read the situation before acting on stereotypes.

About halfway through the workshop I trade my cataracts for my partner’s macular degeneration. It may be perverted to say, but it’s almost a relief at this point to have macular degeneration. Vision is one of the primary complaints from participants in the workshop.

"Not to be able to see well has got to be the most difficult thing," says Mickey Bonham, a volunteer with Community Care and one of my partners during the exercise. "My clients describe for me what it is like, say, to try to take medication and so on. But it’s hard to know when you don’t have the same disabilities."

This doesn’t surprise Jensen.

"People find that the sight is the most difficult," says Jensen, who has been conducting this workshop on behalf of the Ontario Community Support Association for the past eight years. "That and the fact they are so tired from lack of mobility."

The later part of her statement is certainly coming true as the workshop proceeds. We’re shuffled from one end of the building to the other and back again. We’re told to stand in line so we can order from a Meals-on-Wheels menu. At one point, we are supposed to find a computer and locate a certain website, but the group in front of us is taking so long to type we end up saying the hell with it.

When you are old, waiting is a form of torture. Your existing ailments all turn up a few notches, and the kind of white noise generated from that discomfort is almost unbearable. No wonder some get grumpy.

Becoming sensitive and understanding this kind of suffering is why Community Care had OCSA bring in the workshop, which has served a wide-range of clients including care workers, manufacturers, and architects. At this particular workshop alone, there were representatives from various volunteer agencies, the Rails End Gallery, and even a dental hygienist. The lessons in empathy are applicable to just about anyone, but it will be especially useful for Community Care volunteers.

"I thought this workshop would be beneficial to our volunteers. All our volunteers deal with seniors, so they need to know as much as they can," says Roxanne Casey, resource development co-ordinator for Community Care.

***

After endlessly repeating things to each other, misunderstanding each other, dropping things, and making a general fool out of ourselves, I start to wonder if there is such thing as senility. It seems to me that our buffoonery is almost entirely connected to our physical decline, not our mental decline. The physical impairments merely give us the aura of losing our marbles.

Getting old, particularly for the afflicted, can be seen as the gradual disengagement from the world. Your senses no longer take the trouble to inform you properly. One’s physiology betrays its master.

I believe we begin to get old when a chasm is struck between the body and the soul. It’s akin to a light bulb. With the young, we are unable to distinguish the hard outer shell from the tungsten filament within; body and soul presents itself as one shining light. It is only with age that we begin to mark the dividing line.

And for the old, witnessing that gradual division can be disheartening. Not only for the physical discomfort it engenders, but also for the esoteric knowledge it brings: the foreshadowing of what is inevitably yet to come.

Other cultures – in fact, I would say most other cultures -- regard the old with respect. For other societies aging represents wisdom, and for their young, the responsibility of taking care of those who came before and served them. In western culture, namely North America, we don’t share that worldview.

Someone once said, if you want to find out the values of a culture, look to its advertising. It doesn’t take long to realize we are a culture that is geared toward the young. Mostly every product is marketed by associating it with youth and vibrancy. The most fitting example is Viagra, a product that directly exploits the natural aging process by making men feel guilty about it. Another example is plastic surgery, an industry that had 9.2 million customers last year in the United States alone. Meanwhile, our television sets, which advertising is built around, is littered with extreme dating, extreme sports, and anything else young and able bodies can perform.

In a few short years one in four Canadians will be a over 65. Undoubtedly, aging will not go well for all of them. But if, in their corporeal decline, they become uncomfortable, irritable, or even a little grumpy – it might serve us all well if they are regarded with a little compassion and some simple human decency. Who knows? The favour may even be returned one day.

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