Some mighty life lessons were learned at Chautauqua this year.

The first relates to aging and recuperating from an illness. When the body is frail but in the healing and strengthening process, it is better for the frail one to attempt to use muscles even though it takes longer to do everything. In our eagerness to assist an older person struggling to do a task, we are preventing them from using the muscles required. Opening doors, fetching things. We facilitate their weakness by doing for them. Our haste makes us want to accomplish things faster. And our need for speed makes a slow, frail person take longer to get back into shape. It is really always better to ask a frail person if they would like that door opened, or that glass retrieved. They may prefer to do the task themselves. The other downside to waiting on people, is the frail person then is left with nothing to do, but to sit and wait to be waited on. Every single person wants to be useful and have purpose, so allowing a person to be useful is giving them reason to live.

Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORC) was a concept with which I was unfamiliar. The Chautauqua Institute appears to be one of those. This concept has been formalized, and there is actual funding to assist in program and service developments for these kinds of communities. It certainly makes sense for those who want to age in place, and then live from frailty to grave in a place with people they know and love and who are informal support for meeting lots of life's needs.

The third lesson was that these NORCs are perfect targets for home care and aging services. They are ripe for someone to research for location and them start providing services to the high end communities.