Reflection II: For One More Day Reflecting on the What of this course, we consider our role in the context of: self, family and serving a community of individuals who have lived years beyond our current experiences. It raises the questions: Why reflect on their lived experiences? What can we learn that is relevant to our everyday social media-driven and Covid environment ? These questions represent the Why of our reading For One More Day and the Five Invitations. Reading the most recent discussion board posts, it is clear cultural approaches to connecting with and caring for elders greatly differ. The posts reveal that engaging and reflecting on those who have lived decades of different experience can be valuable in so many ways when it comes to aging and death. Some of the service projects have gone beyond the realm of imagination in terms of serving family and others in the community. Overall, these encounters and efforts point us to seeing the value of reflecting on self, family and community. 1. Reflect on: What is at the heart of your serving the aging during this most challenging Covid time of life? Albom, page 142, writes “a mountain climber tells Chick that descending is much more difficult than ascending: “The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature. You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up.” How might we interpret this statement? Where were Chick’s ascents and descents (ups and downs)? Where are our ups and downs while trying to serve a community who was the most vulnerable in the early Covid days? What must it have been like to be in a senior living facility and family outside the window? What does this tell us about life and our maturation? What does it reveal about mature hope as outlined in Five Invitations? 2. For One More Day and The Five Invitations (chapter 3) offer us opportunities to reflect on forgiveness and regret. As a result, reflecting on Chick’s experience reflect on the following: “Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go through your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back. What if you got it back?” What did you imagine these sentences meant when you first read them? What does it mean to you now? Is there someone in your own life with whom you’d like to spend one more day with and what would that day be like based on Chick’s experiences? 3. Finally, reflecting on self, family, and the aging community, what are you learning about serving others? What are your biggest take aways from the course thus far? How might those take aways impact your life as you go forward, regarding aging parents and other family members? Structure for this reflection is: • Address the content of paragraphs 1-3 as outlined above • Directly connect with each course text; in other words demonstrate a connection with Chick’s experiences. • Reflect on your experiences while creating the service projects, content of discussion posts and conversations with those you have served in the community, whether from family gatherings or in social distancing encounters. • Twelve point font, double space, academic margins • Cover page does not count as a page in the paper • Two and a half to three pages in content • Cite sources, no headers, no bullets • Please do not copy and paste the three paragraphs into the body of your paper.
