HOLDING HANDS

When we take the time to reflect on the journey of life, we come to realize how precious it is to share our love with each other.  However, our love and feelings of intimacy began with our mother.  She was the one who birthed you and probably the first person who held your little hand and provided you with nourishment, warmth and a safe place to rest your head.  That experience was the beginning of our earliest connection to give us a feeling of a bond to another person.

Physical intimacy is a sensual proximity or touching.  It is an act or a reaction that allows us to express feelings between people such as close friendship, love or sexual activity.  Examples of physical intimacy can occur without even touching another person such as sustained eye contact or when one enters another’s personal space. This kind of intimacy is a natural part of interpersonal relationships.  Research has indicated that it has health benefits.  A hug or a touch can result in a release of oxytocin, dopomaine, and serotonin, as well as a reduction in stress hormones.

 Holding hands, although a form of physical intimacy involving two or more people, may or may not be romantic.  In a scientific study, “Lending a hand”, neuroscientists from the University of Virginia and the University of Wisconsin studied the effect the simple act of a human touch has on people in stressful situations.  The participants underwent the threat of electric shock.  The researchers came to the conclusion that a “loving touch reassures.”  One of the researchers, Dr. James Coan said, “We found that holding the hand of really anyone made your brain work a little less hard in coping”.

 Holding hands is an act that is so common.  Pop stars and even animals do it.  It is also interesting that how you and your partner hold hands can reflect how you both see the relationship. According to a 2013 study published in Current Psychology about 90 percent of men when holding hands with their spouse put their hand on top, probably much like an adult puts their hand on top of a child’s hand. This behavior may imply that the man is the more dominant.  Yet, a 1999 study from the journal Perceptual and Motor Skills indicated that it is a more traditional way.  But what difference does it make?

What’s important is that there is a loving affective connection. It appears that we like to be connected.  Those of us in our senior years have faced a variety of stressful situations during our life such as illness, loss of a loved one, divorce, serious injury or even betrayal.  Yet, those moments when we felt a warm hand hold ours, it was so very comforting.  Sometimes, some of us enjoy holding hands while watching television or just sitting together and relaxing. There is a soothing warmth that radiates between us.

 

 

    

 

 

WHAT MAKES FRIENDSHIP

 

 

                                                    Those one cares about

                                                       Trust without doubt

                                                       Carry warm feelings

                                                       Make easy dealings

                                                       Always there to listen

                                                       When times are needed

                                                    To share private thoughts

                                                          For solace sought

                                                     Or enjoy pleasant times

                                                     For interesting diversions

                                                  That can become excursions

                                                       To enjoyable places

     There are so many synonyms for friends such as a pal, buddy, companion, acquaintance, comrade, ally, associate, colleague, supporter and helper.  If one prefaces the word true for each of the above synonyms, then the attribute of true adds an element of authenticity in a friendship.  It seems that true friendship constitutes an unconditional acceptance of another person.   This acceptance is lasting and enduring and regardless of intermittent or occasional disagreements there is a bonding of trust and faith with another that allows the friendship to endure   If the moral fabric of either friend is destroyed or lost, there is a strong possibility or even a probability that the friendship will deteriorate.  This situation is serious if both friends have always had similar moral values.  So, once the moral or ethical values are broken by either one the perception of respect for another person’s integrity can vanish.

    This explanation now offers an opportunity to become self reflective and to examine the kind of personality we have.  It is quite evident that in our advanced years we have become creatures of habits and carry some baggage from past experience that tends to influence our perceptions of other people and how we see the world.  It seems that we have ways of thinking, outlooks, thoughts, opinions, points of view, mind sets, attitudes and convictions that contributed to what we have become as a person.

    The question now is how well do we get along with each other?  How well do we make a conscious effort to be compassionate, accepting, empathic, understanding, sympathetic and patient with one another?  How well can we learn to be more comfortable and friendly?  It’s important to understand that learning is a powerful tool in life.  Unfortunately, the older we get the more of a challenge it is to learn, particularly at the rate we did when we were younger.  When we allow ourselves to be truly introspective, we can learn to understand how we can relate as a friend.  Undoubtedly,   it takes commitment, motivation and patience.

 

We aren’t given friendships.

We earn them!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE AGE RANGE CLUBS

Denarian: someone between 10 and 19 years of age
Vicenarian: someone between 20 and 29 years of age
Tricenarian: someone between 30 and 39 years of age
Quadragenarian: someone between 40 and 49 years of age
Quinquagenarian: someone between 50 and 59 years of age
Sexagenarian: someone between 60 and 69 years of age
Septuagenarian: someone between 70 and 79 years of age
Octogenarian: someone between 80 and 89 years of age
Nonagenarian: someone between 90 and 99 years of age
Centenarian: someone between 100 and 109 years of age
Supercentenarian: someone over 110 years of age

 Many people become members of these clubs during a lifetime.   Membership in any of them is not exclusive.  As a matter of fact, many people move from one club to another reaping its advantages.   However, not too many join the Nonagenarian Club.  But it is an honor to be admitted.  Extended longevity is a qualification to be enrolled.  It takes faith, love and personal responsibility to enjoy its benefits.   While in the club one has an opportunity to find even more appreciation of life.  There are continuous expectations to succeed and for some to be creative.  Also, there is great pleasure to be able to share and enjoy time with loved ones and to witness the achievements and success of one’s children and grandchildren.  There is so much wisdom and learning still to be gained in this club.

 Professor Dunbar of Columbia University studied people in their nineties and referred to them as nimble nonagenarians.  He considered them nimble because they do not accept what they hear about old age.  They are characteristically able to avoid negative emotions and have the psychological facility to bounce back from the setbacks of life.

Self worth plays a big part of their survival value and it has been said that, “depressed people may be realistic but optimists live longer.” 

The United States Census Bureau reports that because of the increase in life expectancy at older ages people 90 and older now comprise 4.7 percent of the population (age 65 and older) as compared with only 2.8 percent in 1980.  However, by 2050, this share is likely to reach 10 percent.  Such information might not appear statistically significant but it indicates that living longer can be a gift to enjoy. 

 So, those of us who see each other as older or getting older need not berate but praise aging and recognize it as a continued opportunity to benefit from life’s blessings.

  

  

 

 

 

 

PURCHASE
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More Poetry to Enjoy is his second book of poetry with colorful illustrations to stimulate and challenge readers young and old. His poetic expressions excite one's imagination with playful words that beckon to your attention. Each poem encourages you to think and feel emotions we often have.

TURN THE PAGE

 

If you have sprung a leak

And the water is deep

Turn the page

If you slept late

And missed your date

Turn the page

If your meal needs heat

And no time to eat

Turn the page

If it’s cold outside

And you need a ride

Turn the page

There’s always a chance

For you to advance

Turn the page

DEAL WITH IT

 

Sometimes, there are situations facing people that seem insurmountable regardless of one’s age.  When they occur, stress builds up and they are perceived as existing forever. The fact of the matter is with time they eventually do pass.  How we handle a situation can be managed with minimizing stress.  It takes a certain amount of personal awareness to understand and deal with it.  We need to step back and recognize that we have a choice as to how we react to what we are facing.  True, that’s not easy but we do have that capacity to summon the process of reasoning. 



Maybe some of us can remember our English class in high school when we read and even memorized “Invictus” (Latin for “unconquered”), a short Victorian poem by the English poet William Ernest Henley (1849-1903).

 

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced or cried aloud.

Under the bludgeoning of chance

My head is bloody but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged the punishments the scroll

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul. 

Interestingly enough, in 1875 one of Henley’s legs was amputated due to complications from tuberculosis.  He was due to have the other removed; but, fortunately another surgeon saved the other leg.  He was inspired to write this poetry while recovering and also with recollections of an impoverished childhood.   His poem has been immortalized by Winston Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons on September 9, 1941 by paraphrasing the last two lines of the poem, “We are still the masters of our fate.  We are still the captain of our souls.”  Nelson Mandela, while in prison, recited the poem to other prisoners and was empowered by its message of self-mastery.

 We have the courage and ability to address stressful situations in a rational manner to endure what may appear to be unending, perpetual or everlasting.

 

  POLONIUM

Every now and then I get to see a science fiction film.  This time it was called “Transcendence” with Johnny Depp, (Dr. Will Caster, a scientist and his wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) who work with a team to create a sentient computer including artificial intelligence.  The story unfolds with Dr. Caster being shot with a polonium laced bullet. Of course, the film continues to extend into a scientific fantasy, but it was the word polonium that perked my curiosity. 

I did some research and found that polonium is a chemical element with the symbol Po and the atomic number 84, discovered 1898 by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre Curie.  It was named Marie Curie’s native land of Poland (Latin: Polonia).  Poland at that time was under Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian partition.  It was Curie’s hope that naming the element after her native land would give it publicity to becoming an independent country.

Marie had left Poland and went to Paris where she eventually continued her studies in physics and chemistry and completed advanced degrees at the University of Paris. Her great contributions in science emerged in collaboration with Pierre when they investigated the cause of pitchblende radioactivity.  Marie decided to investigate uranium rays and in addition to the discovery of polonium, eventually isolated radium.   The naming of radium dates back to about 1899 from the French word in Modern Latin from radius (ray). 

The first experiments in the biological properties of radium began in France and encouraged a new branch of medical science radiumtherapy (in France called Curietherapy).  Later it developed in other countries so that today we have its use in treating many diseases, particularly cancer.  Interesting to note, polonium has been produced in industry and was part of the Manhattan Project’s Dayton Project during World War ll as a crucial part of the implosion-type nuclear weapon design in 1945.    

Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win two Nobel Prizes in two sciences, physics and chemistry, with a total of seven outstanding awards.

There are a number of biographies devoted to her as well as movie films depicting her life.  She is an icon in scientific history.