Observations on Life, Death, Love and Occupy Chicago

It started out on Wall Street NYC and spread fast all over the United States: the people's creed for a just economy and adequate representation in politics. And change can also be felt elsewhere, including here in Chicago:

This year's Halloween saw costumes like "The 1%"or Cain's "9-9-9"plan. People understand. And when I dressed up as an old-school dandy, people mistook me for "The Monopoly-guy!" (Or "Mr. Peanut," who is not related to politics whatsoever).

At my project 'The Selfhelp Home', a Jewish retirement home, the residents have established a discussion group that deals with

current events and political issues.

Attending the weekly meetings is highly interesting to me. It is amazing how many diverse opinions are being expressed, sometimes even in a highly energetic manner.

Despite their age none of the members are indifferent about the future.

They keep asking me ("the youth") about the Occupy-Chicago movement; they are curious. And sometimes they shed an entirely different light on certain issues. The aged may argue from a different perspective but are nonetheless still involved with today's history.

Let me compare their situation to mine: They have already lived their lives while I am the person to (hopefully) live through all the future change. They quote "FDR" and speak of "the war" as a real-life event while I learned about this era from history books.

A resident once told me "I pray to God every day he lets me die" and another resident's response went like this: "Why would you want to die? You might miss something that will happen! Don't you want to know what's going on down here?" (She is 100 years old).

Yet it is true. Sooner or later they will pass on and my generation will stay behind.

These are the difficult moments of working in a retirement home - when death becomes a real issue. "I consider this my last stop" the same vibrant 100-year old lady said. "I won't be moving anywhere from here". It is a simple truth, but hard for me to conceive. When you are 19 you don't want to think of aging and death as things that will affect yourself someday. We tend to avoid these thoughts and push them off into the distant future in order to focus on everyday life.

But what we often lack is a deeper understanding for the elderly among us. In most people's opinion 'old people' are mostly 'slow' and therefore annoying, super conservative and always reminiscing about the "good old days". But if I reflect on everything I learned during my past weeks at Selfhelp, I would come to the one simple but profound insight: Old people are like everybody else, except they have been here longer. In fact, sometimes they can be much more patient than I could ever be. And when they fall in love (yes,it happens) they act as childish as 13-year olds. Certain things just never change.