Ken Garfield of the Charlotte Observer offers a thoughtful argument about the need for all of us to start seeing the elderly in a new way, and to value what we see.

“The elderly need affordable health care and medicine, a safe place to live, and loved ones who won’t turn their backs on them. But to live a truly good life until the end, the elderly also need to see themselves in a new light, and so do their children,” Garfield writes.

To illustrate how some people advocate rethinking the way we see old age, Garfield describes a doctor in Little Rock, Arkansas who advises his elderly patients to observe themselves naked in a full-length mirror — and to tell themselves that they are beautiful.

A new model

Garfield advocates giving up the standards we use to measure success in our 20’s (or our 50’s), like being busy all the time, and instead to embrace creativity and the dignity that seniors demonstrate as they cope with the challenges that come with old age and the imminence of death.

“(The elderly’s) challenges go beyond climbing the corporate ladder or paying down a credit card,” Garfield writes. “Their struggles involve living with the death of a spouse or the loss of their health, or being abandoned by children who think they have better things to do than visit mom in the nursing home.”

Old people and young people alike can benefit from thinking of the elderly as “wise guides” and “wounded healers” who can teach others how to live with dignity and compassion.