Elderly And Spirituality

2149 Words9 Pages
People of all ages try very hard to find a purpose to wake up and live their daily lives. To realize and break down the correlations and the differences between religion and spiritual beliefs may start to explain the thought process of seniors who help other’s and support people other than themselves. Finding the meaning of spirituality, and learning about its ability to help and motivate and starting to practice the acts and thoughts of spirituality can help elderly people to find purpose, meaning, and strength to continue to live a happy life. A lot of people show their spirituality through selecting a religion and practicing that religions laws and devotion. Others show their spirituality with acts of compassion or service to the community or people in need. Also many elderly feel that teaching, and passing on stories, knowledge, and wisdom that have learned over time, to the new generations, help them come to peace with themselves, and allows them to pass in to the afterlife with a clear and at lease mind. Most people believe that religion and spirituality are one and the same and have no differences. Both religion and spirituality share common traits but as Twycross (1988) once wrote: "Everyone has a spiritual component, but not everyone is religious." Religion includes specific beliefs, practices, laws and other components that must be followed, while spirituality is far broader than and not as defined as a religion(Ebersole & Hess, 1998). Thoughts of love, compassion, respect and preservation of life, that is spirituality. People don’t have to practice religion and spirituality with groups of people, or congregations, many people practice both in privacy. Many people believe that it takes a certain mind set, in order to believe in spirituality. This is because many people believe spirituality is the belief in a relationship with others, their place in the
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