Generativity -- Being Needed and Giving Back

“Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson dubbed a term “generativity” –

the process not of achieving and keeping things, but giving them away.

You can’t take the house you built or the songs you wrote with you, to say

nothing of the family you created. They are all your body of work, your

mortal oeuvre (collective works), and there can be joy in handing them on.”

Erikson conceptualized generativity as a stage of psychosocial development that usually didn’t occur until middle adulthood and that concerned itself with helping to nurture future generations. Over time, this conceptualization has broadened to include giving back to society in such a way that engenders a feeling that we are helping to move the world in a more positive direction.

As we near the end of life, generativity is a concern that can be realized through parenthood, volunteering, teaching and mentoring, neighborhood and community activism, or through our careers. Employing generative energy, we can care for others, and we can contribute to the world and the people we will ultimately leave behind.

“The idea of one generation replacing the next becomes a buffer against anxiety,” says Thomas Pyszczynski, professor of psychology at the University of Colorado. If there’s peace to be had at the approach of death, it comes from knowing that the world we're exiting is at least a bit richer than the one we found when we arrived.

Researchers have talked about how generativity may come from multiple motivations. One of the reasons we form a desire to be generative is because we have a “need to be needed” by others or to feel useful to or needed by other people. It can also stem from a desire to leave a legacy that lives on after we have passed, or from wanting to give back and make a difference to others.

Several studies now have established that our sense of how generative we are, or our self-perceptions of generativity, are associated with both psychological and physical health outcomes. For example, adults with more positive self-perceptions of generativity tend to have lower levels of depressed and anxious mood, and they also tend to be happier and more satisfied with their lives.

Adults who have more positive self-perceptions of generativity also have a lower risk of developing physical disabilities. Generativity may even have an impact on how long we live; older adults who feel more generative or feel that they are useful to and needed by other people have a lower risk of mortality.

“People want to share memories, pass on wisdoms and keepsakes, connect with loved ones, and to make some last contributions to the world. These moments are among life’s most important, for both the dying and those left behind.”

– Dr. Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal

Being generative does not require huge resources of money or specific skills. Normal people can engage in simple actions that enrich both themselves and others. Generativity can include forms of productivity and creativity in four foci: people, groups, things, and activities.

“People can be generative in a wide variety of life pursuits and in a vast array of life settings, as in work life and professional activities, volunteer endeavors, participation in religious and political organizations, neighborhood and community activism, friendships, and even one's leisure-time activities."

-- Dan McAdams and Ed de St. Aubin, psychologists

Stagnation is certainly a fear for our Baby Boomer generation. People who are stagnant often feel useless and unneeded. Their final crisis is about integrity and despair, and it is characteristically felt during the final years of life.

At the end of life, we are likely to review the past and to ask whether it has been lived as well as possible. Since our personal history can no longer be altered at the end of our life, it is important for us to make peace with what actually happened and to forgive ourselves and others for mistakes. The alternative is despair, or depression from believing not only that we live our lives badly, but also that we no longer have any hope of correcting past mistakes. Generativity is the opposite of despair in stagnation.

“Writing my book taught me that being a successful person isn’t about career achievement or having the most toys. It’s about being a good, wise, and generous human being. We can conclude we’re failures and that our lives lack meaning, or we can embrace a different definition of success, one rooted in generativity – in doing the quiet work of maintaining our “stores” in our own little corners of the world, and making sure that someone will mind them after we’re gone. That, ultimately, is the key to leading a meaningful life.”

– Emily Esfahani Smith, Poynter Journalism Fellow at Yale University and author of The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life that Matters

Consider the life of the great psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), who survived the horrors of Nazi Germany. He, his wife, and parents were deported to the Nazi Theresienstadt Ghetto. His father died of pneumonia half a year later from the ghetto's deplorable conditions.

The next year, Frankl and his wife were transported to the infamous Auschwitz death camp, where more than a million people would eventually be murdered. He was then transferred to two additional camps, separating him from his mother and wife, both of whom would eventually perish.

During this ordeal, Frankl came to believe that the only way he could survive and maintain his sanity was to hold tightly to a sense of meaning and purpose. He was fond of quoting the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost anyhow.” For Frankl, personally, meaning flowed from acting as a psychiatrist and physician to his fellow prisoners, as well as from reflecting on his love for his wife Tilly.

After being liberated from the camps, Frankl spent his life advocating for the importance of meaning as a salve against suffering and the secret to happiness. Meaning brought him through the Holocaust and formed the basis for his entire approach to life. Yet, for Frankl, meaning cannot be pursued as a goal in itself. It must ensue as a side-effect of pursuing other goals – embracing activities that connect us.

“Don't aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue.”

– Viktor Frankl

Generativity is full permission living. It represents our refusal to compromise and accept trite adages about the ravages of time. To be generative is to find deeper meaning and fulfillment in our lives, no matter the age. Why should we stop living and pursuing our understandings in the latter years of our existence? Why shouldn't we seek joy in sharing our feelings with others? We and others should accept permission to “be” until we no longer exist.

Lines on Retirement, after Reading Lear

David Wright

for Richard Pacholski

Avoid storms. And retirement parties.

You can’t trust the sweetnesses your friends will

offer, when they really want your office,

which they’ll redecorate. Beware the still

untested pension plan. Keep your keys. Ask

for more troops than you think you’ll need. Listen

more to fools and less to colleagues. Love your

youngest child the most, regardless. Back to

storms: dress warm, take a friend, don’t eat the grass,

don’t stand near tall trees, and keep the yelling

down—the winds won’t listen, and no one will

see you in the dark. It’s too hard to hear

you over all the thunder. But you’re not

Lear, except that we can’t stop you from what

you’ve planned to do. In the end, no one leaves

the stage in character—we never see

the feather, the mirror held to our lips.

So don’t wait for skies to crack with sun. Feel

the storm’s sweet sting invade you to the skin,

the strange, sore comforts of the wind. Embrace

your children’s ragged praise and that of friends.

Go ahead, take it off, take it all off.

Run naked into tempests. Weave flowers

into your hair. Bellow at cataracts.

If you dare, scream at the gods. Babble as

if you thought words could save. Drink rain like cold

beer. So much better than making theories.

We’d all come with you, laughing, if we could.