The greatest blessing one can have in old age is a sense of fulfilment. And
that won’t appear out of the blue when you retire from your job.
Life is never easy for anyone though many people are lucky to be born in
circumstances that support healthy growth and development while quite many
others have to endure much agony to get stray ecstasies. A lot of things that
happen to us – right from our parents – are beyond our control or choice. We
are born not because we want to be. A lot of people come in and go out of our
lives irrespective of our likes and dislikes and not without leaving deep
imprints in our psyche. Teachers, for example. Religious people like priests
who may shape or distort our entire perspectives irreversibly. As we grow up,
we will definitely come across a lot of unsavoury people and situations. They
all affect our personalities. Yet in the end, what we are is our own
responsibility in spite of all the knocks and kicks we receive all along.
Finding fulfilment in the end is our responsibility.
Psychologist Erik Erikson calls that fulfilment ego integrity. Ego
integrity is what a psychologically healthy old person will experience in
his/her late 60s and thereafter. It is a feeling that your life has been quite
a rewarding experience. You feel that you have accomplished something
worthwhile in your life. It is a sense of contentment. There is some wisdom
bubbling in your soul while life is subsiding in your nerves.
Erikson defines wisdom as “a detached concern with life itself, in the
face of death itself.” You know that your time is running out. You know that
the inevitable end will catch up with you soon enough. But that does not deter
you from being happy. Despair is nowhere in sight.
Despair is the opposite of ego integrity in Erikson’s psychology of
personal development. If you don’t achieve certain things at the right time in
your life, you are likely to end up with some despair instead of the feeling of
contentment that arises from your ego integrity or a feeling of wholeness. [One
meaning of integrity is wholeness.] You feel like a fragmented person in the
end. How can we avoid that fate?
There are certain qualities or virtues that we should acquire at certain
stages of life. Our infancy should teach us the virtue of trust. The love and
care we receive in the first 18 months of our life determines how good our
trust is. Those who are fortunate enough to have a nurtured infancy are likely
to grow up to be optimistic adults who can trust other people as far as they
are trustworthy. Without that nurture and affection, they become mistrustful
and negative. The trust we learn in the first 18 months of our life is
practically the cornerstone of the psychologically healthy personality.
As we grow up, we need to acquire certain other virtues like a sense of
autonomy and initiative in childhood, identity (understanding one’s place in
the world) in adolescence, intimacy (ability to establish healthy relationships
with others) in young adulthood, and generativity (making your mark in the
world through your accomplishments) in middle adulthood. If a person does not
acquire these virtues at the right times, he/she will grow up with a sick
personality marked by serious deficiencies such as mistrust, shame, guilt,
inferiority, confusion, isolation, stagnation, and – finally, in the old age –
despair.
Erikson considered integrity as the wholeness that develops in us as we
grow up with a healthy psyche. But integrity is not an end result of a process;
it should be there in us at every stage. We should be whole at every stage of
our growth. Wholeness and health cannot appear at any stage all of a
sudden. For example, the ability to form healthy relationships will not appear
from nowhere in young adulthood just by getting help from a counsellor or a
religious guru or anybody at all. Healthy growth is a gradual process. Others
can definitely help us at different stages in relevant ways, no doubt. But
integrity (wholeness) should be there in us at every stage if we wish to be
really healthy.
This integrity is what is lacking in quite many people in today’s world.
The world teaches us to pretend be whole instead of being really whole. There
are quick-fix solutions for all problems today. You are not happy with your
hair? Go to a hair stylist and get the problem fixed. Not happy with the shape
of your nose? Plastic surgery is simple and affordable too. Not happy with your
partner? Dump him/her.
Perhaps it would be much better to accept your unruly hair and your snub
nose and the limitations of your partner as unavoidable parts of our reality.
If we can accept certain things without having to modify them restlessly, we
may be able to avoid fragmentation of our selves to a great extent.
Acceptance of certain aspects about ourselves is a sign of our
self-love. We need to be good friends of ourselves first of all. Without that
you can never be anybody else’s good friend. If you keep pitying your hair or
your nose or whatever, you will never be a whole person. When someone insults you,
do you feel hurt and carry the hurt for a long time? [We are living in a
country where a whole lot of people seem to be carrying certain insults from
some 500 years ago!]
We need to explore our own minds regularly, especially the dark corners,
the troubled areas. We need to come to terms with our own folly, envy, sadness
and confusion. We need to heal our own fragmentations. We need to sit by the
shore of a calm sea and put certain pieces together, pieces of our own souls.
Occasionally we need to put our disappointments into words clearly
enough for others to understand our point of view instead of slamming the door
and falling silent. And of course, instead of gathering other disgruntled
elements for lynching perceived enemies.
PS. This is powered by #BlogchatterA2Z
Read the previous parts of this series below:
A: Absurdity
D: Delusions
Tomorrow: Fictional Finalism
"Acceptance of certain aspects about ourselves is a sign of our self-love" and so important for the integrity (finding fulfillment) discussed in the post.
ReplyDeleteWe need to go beyond the quick-fix solutions on offer today.
DeleteA very enriching post about the concept called Ego Integrity.
ReplyDeleteSo relevant! This is so essential and yet difficult to achieve. I guess, as you have mentioned in the post, most of us grow unwholesome due to several factors right from our childhood. What strikes is “We are born not because we want to be.” There are a number of people who leave an indelible mark in our life and we have no control over it. What we can control is our responses and the responsibility to safeguard our own mind and space. I have had this discussion with some friends as well. So your post feels like déjà vu!
ReplyDeleteI went through veritable hells, partly my own creations but made more terrible by others. Now as an old man (senior citizen), I wish I had better awareness in those old days.
DeleteRead your interesting post. But honestly, I feel that its very difficult to acheive and as you rightly mentioned, various factors affect it. Only a person who has reached the highest plane of attainment can acheive this state of mind I guess.
ReplyDeleteIt is an ideal state and hence difficult to reach. But one can achieve much of it.
DeleteEgo integrity- something new for me- good to read this, well written
ReplyDeleteThank you. Erikson is a well-known psychologist.
DeleteSuch an interesting post. This concept was new for me. Thank you for introducing this topic . I enjoyed it thoroughly, Sir.
ReplyDeleteGlad I brought something new to you.
DeleteAgree not all are born or living a life served on a platter, for some struggle is the word, also we are not born out of our choice.
ReplyDeleteI had read ego integrity the word given by Erik Erikson to last of 8 stages of psychological development, for wisdom and death acceptance. How beautiful it is when we sit by the shore of a calm sea and put certain pieces together, pieces of our own souls, contemplating accomplishments. But in real life its not that easy, haven't met anyone who will say now I die satisfied, may be this is human nature...
That absolute contentment is not an easy achievement. But I'm sure some people arrive there, a small number.
DeleteAs you rightly said sir I think with age... When you look back you somehow learn to come to terms with whatever got fragmented along the way. But when in younger age, when you don't fathom life to be a limited affair... You tend to try using the shortcuts and fixing things. The closer you get to know that you are running out of time the more you make peace with your own self.
ReplyDeleteFrankly speaking, I was a blunderer all along until I crossed 40. Perhaps that's natural. Many have had similar experiences.
DeleteSo many threads to unravel here that it makes you want to keep it and ponder. I also think people are too quick to jump on someone else' idea of self-love instead of doing the work to find out for themselves what it means to them.
ReplyDeleteOne grave mistake people make nowadays is to look outward all the time and judge themselves in comparison. It's time to stop and look inward.
Delete