
Nature: traits/personality prewired by genetic and other biological factors
Nurture: the influence of external factors after conception, e.g., the product of exposure, life experiences and learning on an individual
Self-image: the mental images we have of ourselves built up over time
Self-respect: one’s sense of self- worthiness, esteem
Self-respect is a strong but rather quiet element of our being that routinely gets less attention than some of our other qualities. It is linked to both our nature and nurture. We build our self-respect during the decades of our pre-adulthood. A large and solid research project that followed over 3,500 Americans showed that it grows during the years of adulthood, peaking at the age of 60. Then, self-respect is buffeted by: the changes in our social/work relationships (including retirements, and deaths of those important to us), and the arrival of normal age related changes (ARCs) affecting both appearance and function, overlays of abnormalities which affect both capacities and requirements.

This then is the situation and our personal reality within it. But there is the other very important dimension, our responses to our own situation. Given our nature and nurturance, how are we dealing or going to deal with it.
It has taken me decades and the buffeting of my own aging experience, but I seem to have found some ways to retain/ regain self-respect. It seems to have come from:
- honestly examining the deterrents in both environment and life events
- acknowledging/owning changing capacities as a point of departure.
In retrospect there was a need to personally ponder on what was possible to best manage individual elements of the presenting situation. In the beginning (as you could see in these blogs), I looked at capacities in terms of what had been lost and the requirements as uncomfortable hurdles, even threats. But at some point, after reading about the 100% approach. . . a different perspective emerged. Capacities were viewed as 100% for that day. Still later requirements emerged as opportunities to exercise my adaptiveness and 100%’s. The perspective shifted to a micro rather than macro approach. What followed was increased acknowledgement that capacities were actually each doing their best with their current 100%. Rickover’s quote, “The devil is in the detail, but so is salvation” became a constant perspective. Details and a valuing of small, even very small seem to be the keys to protecting and even growing the sense self-respect/worth/esteem.

Personal progress report: At 100, the 100%’s of capacities keep dropping. The requirements in daily living (though much simplified), remain to be managed in one way or another. Expectations are becomingly increasingly modest. The physical world has never been smaller, but the virtual world has never been larger. It’s producing a sense of tentative contentment, and a tested but more solid self esteem, with an expectation of continued serious testing of it lying ahead in the time that remains.
How are you tending your self-respect?