Differences Across the Life Stage in How We Recharge
Energy needs are the fifth component of the DNA of behavior. Energy or E-Values generate behavior that benefits physical and psychological health, and enhance functional performance and well being. They are the impetus for recreational play, which is different from learning play generated by A-Values. E-Values also promote energy renewal through change of pace, activity, rest and relaxation. Finally, E-Values play the lead role in lifestyle behaviors related to health and fitness. (Incidentally, I’ll discuss the term “needs” vis-à-vis “values” in the next post.)
A prominent way by which the young pursue energy renewal is escaping from the dailyness of life. Hiking, bungee jumping, all night partying and other nonroutine activities help the young restore their batteries. However, in midlife people more often recharge through productive pursuits such as gardening, genealogy, volunteer work, e-Bay, craft hobbies, and time spent with grandchildren.
E-Values underlie much of our behavior that is oriented to the pursuit of sensual pleasures, without which – well, life would hardly be worth living. While the young devote a great deal of attention to sensuous pursuits, older people tend to be more broadly engaged with sensual pursuits. The former connotes sexual pleasure while the later refers to a wider spectrum of pleasure rooted in all senses.
In their book Healthy Pleasures, psychologist Robert Ornstein and physician David Sobel report that a regular diet of sensual pleasures, together with a positive outlook on life and time spent helping others was a better predictor of health and longevity than such lifestyle indicators as diet, smoking, exercise and alcohol consumption.
A key distinction between adults in the first and second halves of life lies in distinctions between self-indulgence and self-expression. Self-indulgence tends toward the hedonistic; self-expression toward the existential.
Hedonism is the pursuit of escape through loss of sense of self via such activities as drugs, drinking, and sexual promiscuity. These activities diminish and often suppress altogether a keen sense of self. The very object of those pursuits is to get lost in pleasure.
Listening to music turned up so loud that physiological responses overwhelm sense of self is a more benign example of pleasure seeking through escape. Operators of nightclubs and watering holes for young people know that sound too loud for intimate conversation appeals to the young. Loudness provides escape from the dailyness of life, but also from the self.
Self-expression, in the sense that I am using the term here, is existential because it is about becoming one with what is being pleasurably experienced, but doing so with full consciousness of the experience. It is about experiencing the total, unified self without the edge taken off by mind numbing imbibing or distraction.
Self-expression is about basking in an uplifting transformation of the self. It is a return to the gift that children have: gaining maximum pleasure from minimalist sources. This is not possible in a hedonistic state because the pleasures partaken overwhelm the subtle things from which the more mature mind takes infinite pleasure.
The take-away from this discussion is that better connections will more often be made with members of the 40-plus crowd by emphasizing self-expression rather than self-indulgence because in Erik Erikson’s words, the mature mind seeks vital involvement, not escape. It is the younger, less developed mind that more often needs escape from conditions that hold it hostage. Escapist activity among the young is in service of sanity – unless it becomes an obsession.
Next: A Sampling of E-Value Motivations