GUEST BLOGGER: Kathryn Lawler, Aging Services Consultant
I am a person of patterns. I eat the same thing for breakfast. Look in my closet. You’ll see I buy the same 3 colors year after year. Sometimes this is good, like when my intermittent morning jog turned into an almost daily routine. Other times it’s not so good like when my periodic mid-afternoon chocolate break quickly morphed into a mandatory 3 pm candy bar. For better or worse, only major events interrupt my patterns- my favorite blue suddenly falling out of style; the vending machine at work ceasing to stock Snickers.
Because I am not alone in my need for patterns, habits and schedules, it’s not such a hard thing to confess. In fact as a region, our habits are more than patterns, they are codified into local policy. These rules shape the way we live, work, play, eat, exercise, relax and get around. Some things make life easier. Some make life more difficult. Some like my Snickers bar are good right now, but not so good in the long run.
Whether we’re ready or not a big change is already in progress and it calls into question just about all of our local patterns and policies. Our population is about to radically shift. We will soon be a region of over 6 million people. More households will be childless. More people will be over the age of 60 and at the same time we’ll have more school children than ever before. The region will be home to cultures, languages, art, ideas, food and expertise from around the globe.
All of this change brings with it a lot of uncertainty and who likes that? We can however assert some control. We get to decide-are we going to re-imagine our future and seize the opportunity to change what we don’t like? Are we going to maximize the best of what’s ahead? Or are we going to cling to our old habits comfortable in both the good and bad that we know?
Regardless of what we chose, in the decades to come when the predicted trends have become the new reality, the leaders of today will get the blame or the credit. We have the imagination and the expertise. We just need the will power and perhaps the courage to leave our old Snickers habits behind.
