No, you are not some faulty machinery

The old mechanical way of looking at our bodies and minds is stopping us from living thriving lives. I suggest an alternative which focuses on what matters to us instead of what is the matter with us.

Aug 11, 2022

You are happily cycling along the bike path while taking in the smell of the Dutch tulips and the view of the Dutch canals and windmills. Suddenly your left foot loses its ground and you tumble to the ground. You manage to get back up and realises at a closer inspection that the pedal has fallen off. What do you do? You probably find some way to take your bike to a bike repair shop and get her to fix it and voila, you are back on the road again. This is how it works. Machines function in a certain way and if something goes wrong, the solution is to find the broken part, fix it and all is well. Most people see age-related challenges the same way; individual parts start to break down through wear and tear and so we try as best we can to fix them. Maybe a new knee, a new hip or a pacemaker is what it takes, and the person will work again. But because the parts are starting to get close to their use-by-date, they get harder and harder to fix and this has consequences for other parts too. As a result, the person no longer works – the machinery is faulty and has no purpose anymore.

Is this the way you view older people – or yourself? Let me suggest an alternative way.

Imagine an old kitchen knife. The shaft has gone a bit grey and furrowed. Unfortunately, the blade of the knife has become so dull that it is pretty much impossible to cut through any vegetable with it. Would you call it faulty? Probably yes, as it no longer does what it was created to do. What use it a knife that cannot cut? The blade needs to be sharpened, replaced or potentially the whole knife needs to be discarded. This is the mechanical way of looking at things and there is nothing wrong with it. It is after all a very successful philosophy behind most kinds of sciences and the reason why we have found ways to live much longer.

But let´s try looking at the knife from the philosophy of functional contextualism. Say what? Yes, it is a bit of a mouthful and not a philosophy we read about every day. The meaning is in the name; it takes the context in which the knife needs to function into consideration. Maybe the knife no longer needs to be used to cut vegetable? Maybe instead it could be used to crack garlic or nuts using the flat part of the blade. Or it could be used as a safe prop in a theatre production. Or you could use it to clean your nails or scrape the ice of your car windows. In all of these very different contexts, the knife still has a purpose. It can no longer be described as broken, faulty, obsolete, or dysfunctional. Do you see where I am going? What would happen if we started looking at ageing through the philosophical glasses of functional contextualism as an alternative to the traditional biomedical mechanical point of view?

Mindfulness is an essential part of the so-called ‘third wave’ of behavioural therapy. It contrasts to traditional Western psychotherapy, which is built on a mechanical philosophy, and which has symptom reduction as it´s goal. The third wave of therapies does not look at people as if there is something wrong with them when they suffer, but rather invites us to acknowledge that suffering is a natural part of living and ageing.

I am of course not saying that if your leg breaks, you shouldn´t go and see a doctor. We should make the full use of what modern science has to offer in order to keep our bodies and minds working as best they can. But there are limits to what can be fixed and a mindful approach to life can help us to not waste our time crying over things that cannot be changed.

Mindfulness teaches us that the urge to control or avoid difficult thoughts and feelings are largely responsible for our problems; as long as we are fixated on trying to control how we think things ought to be (young and faultless in mind and body), we are trapped in a vicious cycle of increasing suffering.

So, what is the purpose of the therapies based on functional contextualism if not to get rid of our sufferings? It is to help us relate to difficulties by accommodating them as part of a rich meaningful life. This involves looking at our minds and bodies as functions in various contexts. As with a blunt knife whose parts can no longer function as originally intended, we as human beings can also find ways to adapt by seeing ourselves in a new light, in a new context. Don´t just take my word for it, contextual functionalism rests on a substantial and continuously growing amount of evidence of how this third wave benefits our mental wellbeing[i].

To experience age-related illness, pain or decline in one or more faculties does not mean that we are broken or dysfunctional. We just find ourselves in new contexts which are free for us to discover, adapt to and learn from.

I would love to hear from readers who have found ways to cope and adapt to some of the natural challenges that comes with age.

LivingUpwards

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