Whether caring for myself or caring for another, it is a challenge. When I see caring as a problem, I have failed the challenge. When I see the opportunity for caring, I meet the challenge. The challenge is to see whatever is occurring in my life as an opportunity and not as a problem.
There are always three choices of perspective as to how I see that my life is presently occurring:
When I see life as happening to me, it will often be a problem and I will see myself as the victim of all the problems that are happening to me in my life.
When I consciously choose for my life to happen by me, life becomes a challenge that I either meet or I fail to meet. When I meet the challenge, opportunities open up in my life but when I fail the challenge, life becomes a problem again.
When I see my life as happening through me, opportunities miraculously appear and every opportunity is a minor miracle manifesting in my life. Miracles become everyday events when I allow my life to flow effortlessly through me. Life is a miracle when I see the miracle that life actually is. When I offer no resistance to the opportunities that are on offer in my life, they flow miraculously through me. Miracles cannot flow into my life when I see life as a continuous flow of problems that are happening to me or I am causing.
A challenge is a perspective that I make by choice. I can choose to accept the challenge or I can choose to refuse the challenge, when I see it as a problem or I see all the problems that will challenge me. When I believe that there are too many problems to meet or solve, I fail the challenge.
Problems are a toleration and an energy drain. I fail every challenge when I run out of energy because running out of energy is a problem. My only problem in life is having insufficient energy to meet my challenges and to see them as an opportunity.
Opportunities are there for the taking when I am willing to accept them. Taking an opportunity requires me first to see the opportunity that is being presented. When I do not see the gift that is presented by an opportunity, I will be challenged to accept it.
The first few years of life offer the greatest opportunity for development and growth. They are also the time when we need the care of others, the most. Surviving the first few years of life requires the care of a loving parent, or two. Being born is a great opportunity for every baby and a great challenge for every parent. It is the role of a baby to challenge every parent to become a great parent. Great parents care about their children, care for their children and take care of their children. They see that being a caring parent is a great opportunity, which offers a great opportunity in life for their children.
When parents fail to meet the challenges of parenthood, bringing up their children is just one problem after another and the child’s opportunities in life are greatly diminished. The first few years of life are a great challenge for any child and every parent.
With dementia, the last few years of life are a great challenge for any parent and every child. One of the most challenging opportunities in life is to care for an elderly parent with dementia.
The sins of the parents are passed down the family line. The seeds that we sow in our children will come to fruition when our children become our carer. As we sow, so do we reap. The care that we gave to our children in their infancy will be returned to us in our later life, in due measure. Due measure means equal quality and equal quantity.
Of course our children always have a choice as to whether they care or not and will doubtless find more reasons not to care than they can find reasons to care. Caring for a parent with dementia has many parallels to caring for one’s own children. The only difference is that a child is growing up and an elderly person is winding down.
Life is a process of ongoing growth until it becomes a process of ongoing decline. Dementia is a process of ongoing decline. Instead of gaining intelligence it is a state of losing intelligence, instead of gaining independence, it is losing one’s independence and instead of growing up, the only thing that is growing is their mental decline.
The biggest challenge to caring for anyone is their sub-conscious mind. Children and dementia patients tell you what is on their mind, whether it makes sense or not. The reason that our sub-conscious mind goes into decline is because it can no longer make any sense of its conscious reality. The sub-conscious mind, by definition, is below conscious-awareness and is where our emotional energy is monitored and maintained.
With enough emotional energy, I see everything in life as an opportunity. When my emotional energy is low, I see everything that is happening to me as a problem. The problem is, I don’t have enough emotional energy to meet my challenges in life. The biggest problem that dementia presents is low emotional energy. Low emotional energy is the absence of love and the absence of caring. When the patient doesn’t care, it is a great challenge to care for them.
The challenge for every carer is to ensure that their patient has enough emotional energy for their life not to be a problem. The opportunity is to ensure that they have enough emotional energy to care and their patient has enough emotional energy to care about the care that they are receiving.