One's dilemma with advancing age and no family or friends

Yep. Aging in America often sucks.
If you lack family, friends or outside of your home activities, it can quickly turn brutal.

In the same age bracket as you, been through some medical matters, including a 3-month, another 3- month and even a 4-month inpatient stay. As long as you have your faculties, you can find ways to manage.
Learn to communicate with any caregiver. Remember, they're human too. That said, I never discussed politics or religion with them, beyond the surface. To go past that, can create issues.

Answers for most things about life, will be coming from yourself. Not so much about how to be financially stable in the future, should your health deteriorate or where you can live, but how to mentally exist in and with some level of inner peace.
A positive attitude will help. Don't let your being get caught up in what others are saying and doing. Don't be dragged down by a change of values of others or their culture level or intellectual level. Stay with you and your interests.

Try some internet research into aging in America. There is a myriad of resources, including how to manage if alone.
I wish you the best in this.

As for posting your photo, this site works along with gravatar.com

Thank you for your candor. Yes, I am all alone and everything I have materially accumulated with be taken away from we with great speed. I oftentimes wonder why US culture posits, repeatedly, that we are the best, freest, culture on earth. I think that, somehow, making money and naked greed got equated with liberty.

You know, it sounds so logical and it SHOULD BE LOGICAL, but, somehow, the concept is alien. What if a group or organization of older and / or disabled people, people who American culture really hates, created a kind of co-op whereby they all lived there, frugally, and helped out one another? (This would be a bit like a modern old folks home.) Help with bathing would be an example.

NOW, I am entirely robust, perhaps even stronger than most on this forum, but, still, I think ahead that, theoretically, such a venue would negate the painful and debilitating costs that our social and cultural anonymity imposes upon 'alone challenged people'. Nursing help would be called only when needed, and everyone would have to respect the others' need for peace and quiet.

I feel that I am not even nearly at that stage, but fears are creeping and becoming a cause to reckon with. - David Lyga

Money is nice, it doesn't mean a darned bit, when push comes to shove.

Agree with you about the breed factor which exists, along with that the disgustingly biased class system which keeps evolving.

It might not help you any, but a few years ago my finances tanked. Big time! After the initial anger, sadness, rage, despair, worry, I found myself in a better place mentally. An interesting and strange peace of mind. Sure, I still have moments, but it's oddly okay. Some voice deep inside, keeps saying I'll be okay. (Just hope the voice isn't making things up)

Is your goal to meet new people?

I would recommend you trying meetup.com. You sign up for groups of people who share interests. Then you get invited to real life meetings (although now they are zoom meetings) or social groups. I have had good luck meeting cool people.

They have groups that are specifically about aging.

The 'odd' peace that you experienced, Stugis, was, and is, genuine. "Wealth", even trite wealth, carries with it a repository of burden, believe it or not. You experienced the point whereby ONLY YOU, and not YOU PLUS WEALTH, would now guide your precarious path in life. Sturgis, you are not a stupid man. - David Lyga

Thank you. I will look into this, but am extremely wary, nevertheless, about the integrity and value of such forums. My lifelong cynicism manifests. - David Lyga

Thank you.

Your ability to realize and put it in words, indicates to me, you can find and will reach the place as well. It's a journey of growth, development and discovery.

Thank you, Sturgis, for not being the phony which so many within our culture begets.

Maybe my slowly increasing obsession with this topic is revelatory. (I wish able2know's damn spell check would learn literacy!!!) Your prudent and potent exposition of life's mapped journey, hopefully, will synergize (yet again, spell check!!!) into a unified whole here. It is true that there is no easy way out. There are tons of married people who have 'family' which is an enduring burden because of conflict. I do not have that conflict but I do have fear which increases day by day, year by year. - David Lyga

MODS: both 'revelatory' and 'synergize' are ACTUAL WORDS which do NOT have to be corrected. - David Lyga

general comment

I must admit that I am rather amazed with the number of viewers of my thread after only an hour or two of my original post. Maybe, just maybe, this organization has real merit. - David Lyga

Perhaps your newfound obsession with this is the alert you needed. The animal kingdom tends to have an intrinsic sense within, which, gives them the necessary push when needed. it's something which humans (also part of the animal kingdom) have lost for the most part over centuries. Bigger houses, nicer cars, boats, clothes, etc. Obscured the view of what mattered.

Identifying your concern was the first step. You've done this. Now, to maintain momentum and brace for any challenge, knowing deep inside, you are capable.

My own experience with Meetup.com is very good. There is really no risk. You show up at a restaurant (or a Zoom meeting) and then start talking to people. Sometimes the activity is simply fun (I have played board games at a restaurant), other times it is to speak in a language, or to talk about religion or politics.

I am just trying to be helpful. I found it to be a very safe way to socialize.

Thank you. However, I have an enduring dislike of the hoi polloi, not through any snobbery but through the dumbed down mentality and ethics which America seems with thrive with. (Amazingly, I do not find this lack with, for example, 'ignorant' peasants in a country like Mexico.) The essence of my concern is the blanket explanations, acculturated not from 'testing and experimenting' (empirical reasoning) but, rather, garnered from hearsay and political correctness. I want to distance myself from that dross. - David Lyga

Either you choose to have a social life or you don't.

Having a social life increases your life expectancy (there are solid scientific studies showing this) and makes most people happier. The good thing about being of advancing age is that no one will expect too much other than just spending time. It makes this part of socializing a bit easier as you get older.

The problem with a social life is that you have to interact with people... and as you have found out people aren't perfect. However there is a benefit to learning to simply accept people as they are, and to in turn be accepted.

I don't quite know what you are asking in this thread. Either you get out and meet people, or you don't. If you choose to, you might just find a group of people that you can get along with. And there are benefits to that.

That is the problem: "no one will expect too much ...."

The lack of perfection with people is OK, but the chosen path to ignorance is not. If I interact, I want some input and output, other than that of a trained mouse. An assumption is made in that simply being old is being stupid and mentally lazy. I want no part of that paradigm because doing that is self-denigration. Either you think ... or ... simply breathe to waste one's time.

Why are some of the most 'ignorant' people in this world so filled with mental vitality and why does American culture think that it is so 'advanced'? - David Lyga

I can relate to your situation.

I'm several decades younger than you but have no one in my life. Most people my age have children of their own and/or parents still alive. I have neither.

I worry about growing old and finding myself in a situation such as you describe.

I am not gay, but have sometimes imagined that life would be easier if I were. Men seem to be much more accepting of people as they are than women, especially gay men in relationships.

I don't have much to give in the way of advice, but I can at least tell you there's someone else out here who empathizes with you.

Thank you. And, from what I have observed in life, I think that you are correct in saying that being gay is sometimes easier than being straight.

To be honest, I am both defiant and frightened. I was always at peace with myself but something has happened to our society whereby it seems that ONLY youth is in charge. I live in Philadelphia and (I know that many of you will laugh at this) I am increasingly terrified of walking on the sidewalk. Why? Because there is a whole new generation of cyclists which take absolutely no prisoners when wanting to get somewhere; and sidewalks are the new 'fast lane'. And, recently, added to this fast mix, are e-scooters which have the same, aggressive attitude. NO ONE supports pedestrian rights.

If someone gets hurt there is no outcry about 'recklessness'. Why? Because this behavior has been allowed to become normative, natural, anticipated. Today, the cyclist has the 'right' to do as he or she pleases. The bike lobby takes no prisoners and will not stop until all pedestrian are removed from their adopted pathways. The police could care less.

The central problem here is that, today, parents do not parent. They do not wish for their kids to be 'upset', which is preposterous because how else can you inculcate discipline so that they will grow up with genuinely positive values? Respect for others becomes far less important than fighting for one's rights. - David Lyga

Not just youth, a youth generation of unintelligent, often borderline illiterate, smug, special snowflakes. They grew up being told how special they are, and that everyone ought to conform to their wishes and demands.



Oh boy, I really agree with this. You see this in adult children who live with their parents well into their 30's. You also see this in the education system, especially in the universities where these adult children think they ought to be able to go through life without ever being challenged or becoming upset. College used to be about challenging people's minds by exposing them to diverse perspectives.

I want to embrace you but I cannot because I will be disappointed with the lack of support I will receive. Today's universities have nothing called free speech.

What you corroborated had to be corroborated. I am astounded with how much this has become the rule of law. So much of today's youth cares not a whit about anything other than their phone.

If I really started to speak about today's universities I would be permanently banned from this forum, so I will tread delicately here and state that I was a guest at Temple University's computer lab last year and was harassed by a man of 'another race' by him purposely placing his feet directly under my seating area. (He was sitting opposite, facing me, in front of me.) I politely asked him to move his feet and he verbally blew up at me. The staff just smirked but there was one valiant supervisor who barreled out of his office and gave that guy utter hell in front of everyone.

Bottom line, if it were not for this male supervisor, I could have been physically trashed and the politically correct Temple staff would not have given a damn.

Now ... if the roles had been reversed .... (you fill in the rest).

And this could also have been the same race, but one thing is for certain: the aggressive bikes (ALL races, ALL genders) are the most dangerous physical threat I have yet faced in my entire 70 years, especially at night when most have neither lights nor reflectors. - David Lyga