Sorting and discerning
02/06/16 05:12
The psychologist Erik Erikson developed a model of psychosocial development that included five stages up to the age of 18 years and three further stages beyond. Each stage involved a struggle between mental health and mental illness. The failure to accomplish the tasks of one stage prevented continuing development. Of course Erickson’s analysis was much deeper, but the framework has been useful to me as I worked with people of all ages and I have often returned to his landmark work, “Childhood and Society” for understanding.
In Erickson’s model, the last developmental stage for humans is “Ego Integrity vs. Despair. As we grow older and become senior citizens, we tend to slow down our productivity, and explore life as a retired person. It is during this time that we contemplate our accomplishments and are able to develop integrity if we see ourselves as leading a successful life.
Erikson believed if we see our lives as unproductive, feel guilt about our past, or feel that we did not accomplish our life goals, we become dissatisfied with life and develop despair, often leading to depression and hopelessness.
Success in this stage will lead to the virtue of wisdom. Wisdom enables a person to look back on their life with a sense of closure and completeness, and also accept death without fear.
Erikson himself acknowledged that his theories were descriptive and did not adequately explain how or why development occurs. While they provide a helpful framework for understanding parts of life, they don’t provide a recipe or path for successful development.
As I think about the task of my current life phase, it seems to me that the development of integrity involves discernment. Discernment isn’t often used as a psychological term, but it is an important concept in religious thinking. As I age I discover that more and more of my attention is devoted to sorting out the accumulations of life. Part of this sorting is the physical sorting of acquired objects. We invested part of our resources and energy in acquiring things over the span of our life. We have a home filled with furniture and possessions. We have closets filled with clothing. We have kept some things that we no longer use. Some items are treasured because of their history and the stories that have come with them. Some items are kept, for reasons that escape us.
Aging involves a lot of decisions about what to keep and what to release. Some things are best simply left where they are, but often we have to move objects in order to undertake the discipline of sorting. In the lives of seniors, the sorting becomes most evident when a physical move is undertaken. When a couple downsizes from a home to an apartment, they can’t take everything with them. The church rummage sale has a banner year.
The trick, of course, is figuring out what to keep and what to recycle, repurpose or discard. The process of deciding is discernment.
The task might be a bit less daunting if the only thing that needed sorting was possessions. Humans, however, are far more complex than simply possessors of items. We also have memories and experiences and all sorts of other areas of our lives that require sorting and discernment.
Are there old grudges that I’ve been carrying for years? It is time to discard them. Are there old hurts that haven’t yet healed? It is time to sort them out and move on.
One of the ongoing sorting tasks of my life is photographs. I have quite a quantity of printed photographs and still have more than a thousand slides. Bit by bit I am trying to scan and sort. Certainly there are many photographs that do not need to be retained. Having too large of an unsorted digital collection makes the important images as difficult to find as if they were jumbled in a drawer of prints. The challenge of sorting photographs is that they trigger memories. As I attempt to sort the images, I am also recalling the past and sorting the stories of my life. A single image can set off a flood of memories.
I assume that I’m engaging in Erickson’s task of developing integrity. My life is not just a series of disconnected experiences and events. They fit into a whole and that whole is me. Who I am has grown out of the things I have done, the people I have known, and the experiences we have shared. My life is more than a random set of experiences. It is a whole, but it isn’t always clear how all of the pieces fit together. It is likely that the summer I spent tipping cans into the back of a garbage truck somehow informs my work as a pastor and teacher, but the connections aren’t always direct. Some days, however, having served in a variety of different roles is as valuable to the completion of my days as is a theological education and the list of courses I have taken.
I suppose that I am approaching the stage of my life where writing a memoir might be in order. The process of telling my story in some kind of cogent order should force me to do a lot of discernment. There are stories worth telling and others that are less important. There are experiences that inform my story and others that only offer an anecdotal connection. The task of sorting out and writing down my life, however, seems as daunting to me as sorting out my library. I know that I need to get rid of hundreds of books if for no other reason than to save my children from that difficult task if I don’t get it done before I die.
One of the important parts of discernment is allowing God to influence my decisions. Sometimes the most important thing is to remember that everything came from God and ultimately everything belongs to God. Giving up an object or a memory doesn’t mean that it is lost to God.
Perhaps one key to my own integrity is my ability to release to God the accumulations of a lifetime.
In Erickson’s model, the last developmental stage for humans is “Ego Integrity vs. Despair. As we grow older and become senior citizens, we tend to slow down our productivity, and explore life as a retired person. It is during this time that we contemplate our accomplishments and are able to develop integrity if we see ourselves as leading a successful life.
Erikson believed if we see our lives as unproductive, feel guilt about our past, or feel that we did not accomplish our life goals, we become dissatisfied with life and develop despair, often leading to depression and hopelessness.
Success in this stage will lead to the virtue of wisdom. Wisdom enables a person to look back on their life with a sense of closure and completeness, and also accept death without fear.
Erikson himself acknowledged that his theories were descriptive and did not adequately explain how or why development occurs. While they provide a helpful framework for understanding parts of life, they don’t provide a recipe or path for successful development.
As I think about the task of my current life phase, it seems to me that the development of integrity involves discernment. Discernment isn’t often used as a psychological term, but it is an important concept in religious thinking. As I age I discover that more and more of my attention is devoted to sorting out the accumulations of life. Part of this sorting is the physical sorting of acquired objects. We invested part of our resources and energy in acquiring things over the span of our life. We have a home filled with furniture and possessions. We have closets filled with clothing. We have kept some things that we no longer use. Some items are treasured because of their history and the stories that have come with them. Some items are kept, for reasons that escape us.
Aging involves a lot of decisions about what to keep and what to release. Some things are best simply left where they are, but often we have to move objects in order to undertake the discipline of sorting. In the lives of seniors, the sorting becomes most evident when a physical move is undertaken. When a couple downsizes from a home to an apartment, they can’t take everything with them. The church rummage sale has a banner year.
The trick, of course, is figuring out what to keep and what to recycle, repurpose or discard. The process of deciding is discernment.
The task might be a bit less daunting if the only thing that needed sorting was possessions. Humans, however, are far more complex than simply possessors of items. We also have memories and experiences and all sorts of other areas of our lives that require sorting and discernment.
Are there old grudges that I’ve been carrying for years? It is time to discard them. Are there old hurts that haven’t yet healed? It is time to sort them out and move on.
One of the ongoing sorting tasks of my life is photographs. I have quite a quantity of printed photographs and still have more than a thousand slides. Bit by bit I am trying to scan and sort. Certainly there are many photographs that do not need to be retained. Having too large of an unsorted digital collection makes the important images as difficult to find as if they were jumbled in a drawer of prints. The challenge of sorting photographs is that they trigger memories. As I attempt to sort the images, I am also recalling the past and sorting the stories of my life. A single image can set off a flood of memories.
I assume that I’m engaging in Erickson’s task of developing integrity. My life is not just a series of disconnected experiences and events. They fit into a whole and that whole is me. Who I am has grown out of the things I have done, the people I have known, and the experiences we have shared. My life is more than a random set of experiences. It is a whole, but it isn’t always clear how all of the pieces fit together. It is likely that the summer I spent tipping cans into the back of a garbage truck somehow informs my work as a pastor and teacher, but the connections aren’t always direct. Some days, however, having served in a variety of different roles is as valuable to the completion of my days as is a theological education and the list of courses I have taken.
I suppose that I am approaching the stage of my life where writing a memoir might be in order. The process of telling my story in some kind of cogent order should force me to do a lot of discernment. There are stories worth telling and others that are less important. There are experiences that inform my story and others that only offer an anecdotal connection. The task of sorting out and writing down my life, however, seems as daunting to me as sorting out my library. I know that I need to get rid of hundreds of books if for no other reason than to save my children from that difficult task if I don’t get it done before I die.
One of the important parts of discernment is allowing God to influence my decisions. Sometimes the most important thing is to remember that everything came from God and ultimately everything belongs to God. Giving up an object or a memory doesn’t mean that it is lost to God.
Perhaps one key to my own integrity is my ability to release to God the accumulations of a lifetime.