Asked about how CareGivingOldGuy does it, easy answer: OG doesn’t think about it much. Might be arrogance here, and NOT to disrespect folks who like them, but “inspirational” phrases, poems, tweets, instagram posts, etc. are not for us in the caregiving role. Wonder why the stomach is churning…
When you’re up to your eyeballs, whatever the muck it is, and you feel like you’re sinking, who needs “when the going gets tough, the tough get going?” Great for social media, though, < 140 characters!
Perseverance, persistence, tenacity, endurance, yeah, yeah, all that, usually in some context of surviving, winning, achieving. Somehow the pithy summary judgments never seem to sit quite right.
Not that we remain unmoved. Being “inscrutable,” born into a stereotyped ethnic group, has given us an excuse to withhold sharing, to hide our hearts deep under our sleeves, and to create blank expressions, so much easier these days with an N95 / COVID mask.
Confession: Adele (“When We Were Young”) or vocalists like Rozzi (“Killing Me Softly”) or Angelina Jordan (“Bohemian Rhapsody”) can consistently open some hidden spigot of tears; sometimes it’s the Beatles (“In My Life”) or the 2nd movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, (starts at 8’30” in this video).
Maudlin, yes, but can’t always just be the lyrics. The “confession” is just to mention that Self-Pity happens, but one learns that it isn’t very practical. Perhaps it’s the prelude to a need for inspiration.
The late neurologist/ writer Oliver Sacks described some of the emotive pressures that music can bring in his remarkable book Musicophilia [link has Dr. Sacks’ own playlist]. Just so you know, CareGivingOldGuy is not musical; never understood chords.
So what keeps a caregiver trying to do their best with every task, every day? Could music (or yeah, maybe those phrases) increase the “caring” part of “caregiving,” so that the “giving” part gets easier?
In a former lifetime, requisite sticky notes full of quotes from the Dalai Lama, Buckminster Fuller, or Yoda seemed helpful, or at least provided comic relief.
In contrast, caregiving is about concrete duties that need to be accomplished, today. Does that require inspiration? Maybe sea shanties, which started as work songs, would be more appropriate.
One work song about disgusting chores (in a funny good way) is from Disney’s 2007 Enchanted, with a wink at the 1937 Snow White, the 1950 Cinderella, and the 1991 Beauty and the Beast.
Amy Adams is brilliant playing a magical princess who gets cockroaches, rats and pigeons to help her clean a filthy NYC apartment:
So maybe that’s the secret to getting things done: conscript your internal resources hiding in the woodwork, mesmerize them, perhaps with music to provide the tempo, and get to it!
“…You could do a lot when you got such a happy little tune to hum
While you’re sponging up the soapy scum
We adore each filthy chore that we determine
So friends even though you’re vermin
We’re a happy working throng
Singing as we fetch the detergent box
For the smelly shirts and the stinky socks
Sing along! If you cannot sing, then hum along,
As we’re finishing our happy working song!
Aah! Wasn’t this fun?”
[Oscar nominated song by Menken & Schwartz]
