I had monthly lunch with my St. Paul's guys, and as we are over 70, we talked about medical issues again, however much we try to avoid it - our own, our spouses', our friends'. We mentioned assisted living facilities that parents or friends had gone to and the exorbitant costs for services we could still easily provide for ourselves. Yet for those that seemed best, allowing the most flexibility and freedom, we wondered when the optimal time to apply would be. Some have ten year waiting lists, and we try to calculate. It helps if you Know Somebody, but the main criteria are your immediate need at the moment of moving in and your ability to pay.
It occurred to me that we are in the exact reverse situation we were in fifty years ago, trying to impress a college that we had amazing abilities, especially cognitive, but very little ability to pay for their services, so that they would offer us as much as possible. Now we are attempting to show we are on the verge of qualifying for significant services, especially ones to compensate for cognitive decline, but have an unquestionable ability to pay for them indefinitely. We once wanted to look as competent as we could, now we are trying to shade toward showing off our incompetence.
I am thinking that Boethius, he of Wheel of Fortune fame, might have some apt quotes for this reversal, but none are occurring to me. That's what happens when one is but a dilettante, with partial knowledge of many things.
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“The sea is permitted to invite with smooth and tranquil surface to-day, to-morrow to roughen with wave and storm. Shall man's insatiate greed bind me to a constancy foreign to my character? This is my art, this the game I never cease to play. I turn the wheel that spins. I delight to see the high come down and the low ascend. Mount up, if thou wilt, but only on condition that thou wilt not think it a hardship to come down when the rules of my game require it..”
That is from Book II, Song I, “Fortune’s Malice.”
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