From the Mouths of the Elderly: What can their Life Experience Teach us?

Introduction This research project was precipitated by two experiences: a. Interacting with older adults in community centers and housing for older adults, and noticing a prevalence of loneliness on the one hand, and their accumulated knowledge which they have very little opportunity to share with others, on the other. b. Teaching, by the first author, of emerging adults in university [ages 18-26] and noticing, by their reactions and comments, how limited their knowledge and connection with older adults is.


Introduction
This research project was precipitated by two experiences: a. Interacting with older adults in community centers and housing for older adults, and noticing a prevalence of loneliness on the one hand, and their accumulated knowledge which they have very little opportunity to share with others, on the other. b. Teaching, by the first author, of emerging adults in university [ages [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] and noticing, by their reactions and comments, how limited their knowledge and connection with older adults is.
it could be transmitted to the youth and thus saving them from decades of mistakes, and on the way lightening up the loneliness felt by many older adults, especially the old-old, aged 84 and up.
According to Erikson and Butler, reminiscence and life review naturally occurs as life draws to a close [1,2]. As death looms closer during the second half of a person's life, the interpretation of one's past life takes on an increasingly large part when bestowing meaning on one's life [3]. This may enhance ego-integrity which occurs when one can see his or her life as a harmonious whole which, in retrospect, can be evaluated as having been positive. Webster found that reminiscence is more important for death acceptance in old age than in other periods of life [4]. Whitbourne observed that, during one's life, a person tends to periodically review their past and when doing so ranks and evaluates their experiences [5]. These renewed constructions are influenced by external life conditions which are considered to be affected by historical, cultural, social, and material circumstances, and by internal life conditions, which are the psychological and biological dimensions in addition to the person's expectations of the time left to live. Gerontological studies point out that psychologically healthy people achieve a positive life audit, meaning that they are cognizant of negative experiences that they underwent, but they do not evaluate them as predominant [3].
Erikson described the stages of human age-related development, addressing ego-integrity as the acceptance of life as it is and as a product of a fulfilled life [1]. While not all of us may look back and conclude that we lived fulfilling lives, life review can help in achieving acceptance and fulfillment. Some interesting research findings of reviewing one's life:  Acceptance of one's achievements in life can prepare one to face death with a reduced, or absence of fear [6]  Disengaging from an active lifestyle, common for most elderly, is closely associated with an increased acceptance of one's past life, based on a reinterpretation of the past [7]  Older people judge themselves more kindly than younger people do [8] Reminiscence is the active or passive recalling of memories from the past, basically allowing one to review one's life [9,10]. Memories are an important source of identity and self-continuity, helping individuals to project themselves into meaningful future events [11]. It has been used, over the years, with significant therapeutic effects especially in reducing stress [12,13]. Butler described such life review as ''an inner experience or mental process of reviewing one's life'' [2]. Re-examination of one's history may result in new understanding, insight, or resolve unanswered questions that the person may have [9]. Chin conducted a meta-analysis evaluating the efficacy of reminiscence therapy and found people who were offered this therapeutic approach reported greater increases in happiness and decreases in the depressed mood [13].

What are the benefits of reminiscing and life review for older adults?
Research has demonstrated that in older adults, life review can enhance general wellbeing in both spontaneous and structured contexts such as an intervention [12,14,15]. The positive effects range from increasing self-esteem [16], life satisfaction, and reducing loneliness, depression, dementia, and mental disorders in older adults [17][18][19][20]. Life review also helps facilitate social contact and foster a sense of belonging [21].
By telling about their past events, wants, regrets, and achievements, older people can transmit their life experiences, folk traditions, and life lessons to younger generations. Intergenerational reminiscence also offers the potential for reducing existing barriers between generations [22,23]. Life reviews, done with youngsters, may help alleviate negative perceptions of older adults, which can negatively affect the psychological and cognitive functions of older adults [24]. Further research found positive intergenerational contact can reduce stereotypes among older adults as well [25]. Intergenerational reminiscence can also provide an effective and rewarding activity that enhances positive forms of interaction between the older and younger generations [26,27].
Gaggioli et al. conducted a study on the effects of intergenerational reminiscence on the elderly's psychosocial wellbeing [28]. Findings indicate that the intervention contributed to a decrease in participants' feelings of loneliness. Additionally, elderly participants perceived intergenerational reminiscence as a highlyinvolving and enjoyable activity. Reminiscence was characterized by clear goals and high levels of concentration and was perceived as being related to personal wellbeing and self-realization [29,30]. Life review has been shown to increase self-esteem, selfsatisfaction, sense of meaning, and purpose in life among older adults [14]. It was also associated with improvements in depressive symptoms among older adults [31]. As was mentioned above, it is intuitively apparent that reviewing positive life events would enhance one's self-understanding, self-esteem, and the feeling that one's life has been meaningful. But all of us make mistakes, by commission or by omission. What about regrets and how do they affect us?
It was suggested that the function of regret is to assist us to learn from our past mistakes. Regret should, thus, facilitate the identification and enactment of behaviors that will prevent one from making the same mistake again [32]. The term regret carries two different meanings. One when one feels sorry for [i.e. ''When looking back on my past life, I regret that I did not complete university''], and the other is to lament or bemoan, as a way of describing feelings about given events or states [i.e. "I regret that my parents were not successful at convincing me not to get married to the one I did"] [33].
When regretful, people tend to wish to change their lives or way of behaving in an attempt to correct the mistakes which they regret [34]. However, many important life decisions, for instance in the areas of education, family planning, and career planning, typically need to be decided and acted upon in specific life stages. Therefore, in many areas of life, the opportunity for change has passed for older people. Since no change is possible in those areas for older adults, their way of dealing with regrets is externalizing responsibilities by attributing negative events to external forces [6]. How do men and women handle regrets? Research indicated that men are inclined toward acting, while women have a tendency to affiliate [35].

What do people regret?
Landman and Manis found that most people wish they had done something differently in their lives, probably meaning that they regret these decisions [36]. Decisions relating to not having completed one's education and having made poor career choices or relationship choices were the most common [37]. Interestingly, research pointed out that people tend to regret more actions, i.e. errors of commission, than inactions or errors of omission. That may suggest that people regret making mistakes more than they may regret missing opportunities [38]. Moreover, the extent to which the unwanted outcome perseverates in memory is a positive predictor of regret intensity [38,39]. Since older adults usually do not have, by and large, an opportunity to correct mistakes that they regret from their past, they may experience "low closure", since it may not involve a changed behavior in the future [40][41][42], and consequently such lack of closure evokes emotions [41]. Importantly, low closure makes the past experience feel psychologically unfinished and unresolved [40,41] and is experienced as aversive [43].
"The follies which a man regrets most in his life, are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity" [44].

About this study:
Clearly, most older adults enjoy talking about their lives and sharing their experiences with others. It is important, however, that they be given some freedom in what they choose to talk about, since older adults are not homogeneous, and not all will want to share the same kind of stories during life reviews. As was earlier mentioned, this study aimed at connecting the younger and the older generations, in a manner that would benefit all participants. Beyond the established benefits for older adults following life reviews guided by our questions, Scott and DeBrew found that these benefits were sustained for both older adults who were interviewed and by the students [research assistants] who interviewed them [45]. The students' ideas about older adults were changed, now being more comfortable talking with older adults. The value of life reflection as a nursing intervention has also been instilled for the student [45].

Participants:
Sixty-six men and sixty-six women aged 60 to 94 (M= 77.9) from mostly low and medium socioeconomic backgrounds participated in this project. They were gathered in the snowball technique, where existing study participants recruit future participants, from community centers, public parks that older adults frequented, or their residences. Participants were read the informed consent but were not asked to sign it, due to their great concern of signing anything without a family member being present and wished to preserve their anonymity. The research was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the university to which the authors belong.

Interviewers:
The participants were interviewed by a total of four female undergraduate psychology students in their beginning twenties. They were particularly chosen for this study since the goal was to have older adults transmit their life experiences to the younger generation, so on various occasions, it was as if grandparents were discussing their life experiences with their grandchildren.

Procedure:
The present research, by asking of the participants several questions [outlined below] was akin to reminiscing and oral history which was defined "as a method for assessing the stories and records that aid in the understanding of previous events in history as well as the feelings surrounding such events. Although oral history research utilizes less structured approaches than other methodologies (e.g., researchers are encouraged to follow cultural norms, practices, and intuition when conducting an interview rather than relying on standardized interview techniques), asking similar questions across participant interviews generates consistency... The flexible style of oral history research offers advantages to participants, including greater openness story sharing and provides participants with greater control in setting the pace of the interview" [46].
Since older adults are a heterogeneous group, and each has his or her own life experience, knowledge, and the way to relate it, we did not use any structured questionnaires or standardized measures to find out those 'pearls of wisdom' that we were after. Instead, research assistants met with older adults who volunteered, for a period that ranged from 30 to 45 or in some cases 60 minutes, and asked them six identical questions (along with some biographical questions regarding their age and marital status):

1.
What have you done in life that you are glad you did? 2. What have you done in life that you regret doing? 3. What have you not done in life that you are glad you did not do? and, 4. What have you not done in life that you regret not doing? 5. What have you achieved in life and how did you manage those achievements? 6. Are there any "pearls of wisdom" you would like to share, for the benefit of the younger generation?
The interviews were recorded, with the participant's permission, and later transcribed. Themes were, then, transcribed and analyzed to be grouped into categories by the two authors.

Analysis:
Thematic analysis, as described by Braun and Clarke was utilized to analyze the data [47]. "Thematic analysis is a method for identifying, analyzing, and reporting patterns (themes) within data. It minimally organizes and describes your data set in (rich) detail. However, frequently it goes further than this and interprets various aspects of the research topic (p. 79). The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and then analyzed for embedded 'pearls' which we saw as wise reflections on one's life, and possibly suggestions for future generations of what to do and what to refrain from in their lives. As suggested by Braun and Clarke, themes that captured an important issue related to the research question and represented some level of patterned response or meaning within the data set was identified [47]. As the above authors observed, the two authors of the present paper, with the assistance of two research assistants, conferred, reviewed the data, and decided what formed the various themes and how to name them. Inter-rater reliability for finding 'pearls' and for categorization of themes was 95%.
A thematic analysis typically focuses exclusively on one level [47]. Themes are identified within the surface meanings of the data, and researchers do not look for anything beyond what a participant has said or what has been written. It was opined that the analytic process involves a progression from the description, where organization according to patterns in semantic content, are summarized and then interpreted, and an attempt to theorize the significance of the patterns and their broader meanings may follow. In contrast, a thematic analysis at the latent level goes beyond the semantic content of the data and examines underlying ideas, assumptions, and conceptualizations that are theorized as shaping or informing the semantic content of the data.

Theme-1: 'Need to study or learn a profession':
Preparing for the brightest future possible often included getting a university education or a professional trade. Older adults stressed how life can be more difficult without building a solid foundation in which to grow from or if needed, fall back on. The concepts of security, stability, and happiness were all present in the interviews as they encouraged younger people to prepare for the years ahead. a

Theme-2: 'Marital Relationships':
Older adults spoke about the importance of marriage and by extension, the process of deciding on the right person. There were numerous expressions of gratitude for their marriage, of love for their partner, and what they accomplished together. On the flip side of that, some participates retold their struggles of marriages gone badly and having made a mistake to marry in the first place. Advice on how to maintain a healthy marriage was also mentioned with an emphasis on honestly, compatibility, intimacy, and working as a team all being recorded.

Theme-3: 'Shaping the future generation/raising kids':
Older adults shared their accumulated knowledge and were mostly interested in making suggestions about what to do, and what not to do in relation to raising children. As well as offering various 'pearls' related to future generations, which gave a major role to parenting, the family, and the set of values that were transmitted from one generation to the next. The theme 'Shaping the future generation/raising kids' was so well represented that we were able to divide it into several subthemes, as follows: a.

Theme-4: 'Regrets':
One of the more heavily populated themes during the interviews with older adults was that of regrets. This included regrets of dithering when needing to be decisive, of being impulsive when it was best to be cautious, of not furthering education, of marital trouble, and failing to be there when others needed help. Regrets were documented by many of the participants as they attempted to save younger generations from making the same mistakes they had made.
a. Regretting Acting or not Acting -Older adults framed knowledge and experience as the antecedents to be able to differentiate between opportunities and unnecessary risk. They also spoke of their own mistakes and urged others to learn from their errors:

Discussion
This research project aimed at engaging older adults in reviewing their lives' achievements, victories, failings, and regrets by using thematic analysis. In the process of answering our questions and thereby reminiscing on their past the themes of formal and informal education, marital/intimate relations (and their cultivation), shaping future generations, and recognizing and resolving regrets all emerged as central to understanding their own lives and hopes for the future. The results of these 132 interviews and analysis include:

Theme-1:
Need to Study or Learn a Profession, was a theme constituted by several concepts associated with vocational success and contentment. This included perseverance, diligence, and hard work, where older adults encouraged younger generations to "keep trying", be honest, prompt, and fair. The capacity to work with others, navigating the expectations of supervisors, making the boss "look good", and being friendly were all behaviors associated with career success. Along with that, education and planning for the future were seen as foundational building blocks for any successful career with the advice given to acquire a trade, explore what area of study interests you, and being adaptable. There was also contrasting commentary about the ability to be proud of one's education and career with encouragement to be humble.
Many of the participants' commentary regarding this theme displayed a common-sense understanding that having a fulfilling career was something worth striving for. While not explicitly stated by the participants, the association between a person's employment and their general flourishing is just below the surface. As Law and Akkermans have documented, there is a large body of evidence that connects a person's occupation and their health, as manifested from the physiological to the functional [48,49]. It is these types of findings that provide an empirical basis for the common practice of placing value in the wisdom of older adults.

Theme-2:
Marital Relationships included several subthemes, of which the most commented on was that of making a commitment, where older adults advised younger people to take the leap and commit to the institution of marriage. They also expressed pride and gratitude for their own experiences with marriage, having found a great partner and how it was an "achievement". Compatibility was also a repeated concept in the interviews with pleas to get to know someone before committing, being honest, and having common interests. Other important aspects of marriage for older adults were, being faithful, caring, respectful, sharing intimacy, communicating, and navigating differences. These presented themselves in exclamations of gratitude that they never undermined their bond by straying on their wives and husbands, the dangers of sacrificing closeness for a career, encouraging the demonstration of love often, the importance of communication, and taking a real interest in their partner's happiness.
The direct association between well-being and marriage has been questioned by a number of studies, Lucas and Stutzer, as well as scrutinized for its establishment in Western countries with WEIRD populations [50,51,52]. While these efforts have introduced a critical perspective to the benefits of marriage it does not undermine the research supporting the notion that marriage can increase the married couple's quality of life [53,54]. It is also important to acknowledge that the advice given by the participants in this study emphasized the importance of becoming and finding a suitable partner, which aligns with research findings that the quality of the relationship was an important determinant of wellbeing [55].

Theme-3:
Shaping the Future Generation/Raising Kids, encompassed actively enhancing the family bond, establishing resilient lines of communication, and inspiring intimacy between family members. It also included defining conflicts as an opportunity for resolution and forgiveness, not a catalyst for grievances or judgment, instilling values that go beyond material wants or needs, promoting prosocial behaviors and empathy towards all fellow humans with a focus on the "golden rule". In addition to this, there was stress placed on the importance of educating children about their own autonomy and how it relates to personal responsibility. Children's dreams and life goals were also seen as vital and in need of encouragement and support, with the particular goal of a child seen as far less important than the act of striving for it with the support of parents to help them achieve it. This kind of support and communication between family members was also tied to deeper personal meanings where the close bond between members could provide support against loneliness and meaninglessness. Lastly, taking pride in the family's accomplishments, and one's own parenting successes were highlighted as the family unit should be a constant source of strength and joy.
This theme placed the family at the foundation of an individual's growth and envisioned it as a touchstone that could always provide strength, a sense of comfort, and a place in the world. Older adults' concerns here are largely for the next generation and how their own accrued knowledge could facilitate future success. This interpretation of one's past life in ways that provide guidance to others is also associated with generating life meaning for older adults. This process of meaningmaking is consistent with Hofer, Busch, Au, Šolcová, Tavel, & Wong's, research, which, in a cross-cultural study, focused on how reminiscence is used to prepare for death and teach others. Both of these "reminiscence functions" were found to motivate generative behaviors associated with meaning-making across all of the cultural samples [59].

Theme-4:
Regrets turned out to be one of the more popular themes as older adults discussed their own mistakes and advised others on how to avoid similar outcomes, which is consistent with findings by Landman and Manis who observed that most people wished they had taken a different path in life [36]. These regrets were commonly expressed in the mentions of missing out on opportunities, juxtaposed with impulsively acting without doing due diligence. Advice related to these concerns was to wait until you have more experience before making large life decisions and to listen and learn from your parents and grandparents. Being undisciplined financially was another common concept, as older adults commented on taking too big a financial gamble on certain investments and the lack of budgeting. Further, the participants spoke of regret of not possessing enough courage to try something new, traveling, or being assertive, all consistent with the desire to make changes when regretful of the past [34]. Other regrets included not working hard enough or avoiding education, with not pursuing higher learning as the single largest regret for the participants.
The next most mentioned regret was not being there when others needed them. This was articulated in comments about moving away from family, not possessing enough patience, pulling back when illness presented itself in a loved one, and concentrating too much on discipline and not listening to children. There were also regrets, exclusively from females, of getting married too early or at all, while men exclusively remarked they wished they had been a better partner or had not strayed. A common thread running through this theme was the regret of lost possibilities as the participants did not spend the required time or effort investing in them in order to realize their potential. With regrets and their association with a lack of closure, people can feel that the past remains unresolved, meaning these emotions could have contributed to the popularity of this theme [40,41].

Conclusion
We believe our study has contributed to reminisce research by facilitating and documenting several beneficial processes that have been highlighted in previous studies mentioned above. These include the establishment/re-establishment of life narratives, preparing for the end of life, and production of life meanings -all of which have been associated with elderly flourishing [12,14,15]. We also believe, through the interview process and thematic analysis, this study created a resource of guidance and actionable advice focused on navigating life challenges for younger generations. With these dual objectives met, it is reasonable to forward our study as a framework for future research which would emphasize the production of tangible benefits mentioned above, e.g. better outcomes for older adults and the preservation and dissemination of knowledge. To this end, since these studies only conducted interviews in the Westernized county of Canada, future studies could be conducted outside these communities so the extent of this approach's generalizability can be examined. That said, due to previous studies and our own research, we do believe this approach to research to be widely generalizable to many elderly populations, and a net benefit to participants and the wider communities. We also believe that further analysis, including comparisons and variations across gender and age groups while it may add value to these findings, would require deploying an entirely new coding regiment. The time demands this would place on the team would be onerous while also creating concerns the manuscript would become cumbersome and possibly distractingly long.