 So, and welcome to Dink Deck Hawaii's program, Don't Just Age, Engage, where you're challenged to grow and to embrace your aging as one of the most wonderful experiences of your life. I'm Larry Grimm, your host for today's program, and we are on program at two o'clock Hawaii time every second Tuesday. So two weeks from now we'll be back with you with another exciting and wonderful look at what it is to age and to engage as you do so. I don't want you to be a victim of aging. Many of us do enter this aging and we think, well, I'm just going to give myself over to my aging body and not do anything about it. And what can I do? But there's a world of things that you out there for us to do to engage so that we're growing and we're prospering and thriving into an extraordinary elderhood. You had a childhood. You had an adolescence and an adulthood and your adulthood you were productive. You were creative. You made families. You made businesses. And now you're moving into your elderhood which is a new opportunity for a new kind of spirituality and celebration of life. What do you do with that? What kind of wonderful opportunities are available to you here in Honolulu and on the island of Oahu in particular? I asked for, I asked Merle O'Neill who if she would come and answer that question, what opportunities are available for an exciting and engaging elderhood? Merle O'Neill, thank you for coming from Waikiki Community Center and being a part of this wonderful discussion. Thank you, Larry. It's a pleasure for me to be here talking with you about the Active Aging Program here at the Waikiki Community Center. Terrific. Merle, I always ask to begin my client, my interviewees to begin with some kind of personal story about how you got to this place in your life. Why does this particular population segment interest you? What is it that has brought you in this journey to this place and to this time? Will you share that with us? Sure. Larry, I was born and raised in Oahu and I grew up in a three-generation household with my grandfather being the patriarch, my parents. And then of course, we were in the kid group. We were in the kid group. And our family, I was fortunate in that my family has a history of long life, longevity. And one of the things that I believe might be unique to our family, not only are they our entrepreneurs, but retire, the word retire is not in our vocabulary. So my grandfather literally worked till the last day. On that day, he died. My goodness. So he came home with a cold, walked from downtown Honolulu to New Oahu to our home and said he wasn't feeling well, laid down and by 10 o'clock that evening, he was gone. Peaceful, nobody really, there was never any major incident, no emergency. I went to school here. I'm a graduate nurse and educator and entrepreneur. I'm a non-profit executive as well as manager, program manager. I've been a caregiver. That sums it up and all the credentials come with it. That's wonderful. Thank you. So back in 2015, I was asked to join the staff of the Waikiki Community Center to design a program for a concept called active aging. And that's for, our target audience at the time was 50 plus and still is actually. And the program was called thriving after 50. I didn't do a great job at branding it. So it's not a commonly understood word. So my question is at what age do we start thinking about aging? And it probably starts in childhood when I can personally relate to that because here were my grandparents that were well into their 90s before they actually departed their bodies. And I came home after a 30 year stay in California to take care of my mother who was totally self-sufficient and she passed away at 101. So I have a very long history in my family of people that live long. My aunt, my mother's sister passed away at 104. Her other sister passed away at 102. My goodness. So my mother was actually the shortest lived of the sisters anyway. Well, it seems to me also you had the advantage that a closeness to the cycle of life, a closeness to the experience of aging and all that that involves for an individual, those individuals whom you loved and you walked the journey with them as you did the rest of your family and the rest of your siblings. And I have to bemoan the fact that so many of us in these days didn't get that experience. We're so grateful as boomers to have the ability to travel and yet the ability to travel, to choose where to go to live our lives also puts us at a distance from one another and a distance physically. So that we don't get a chance to experience that change, the transformation. And it's not just physical, it's a transformation that is deeply spiritual as well as physical. And to know and to benefit from that as we then move into that elderhood ourselves. So you bring a wonderful and very, very valuable look at aging to the community, Merle, because not all of the community has the opportunity to look at aging the way that you have. And what is this active aging that you wanted to do? Before I talk about that, I'd like to talk about what you mentioned about being fortunate to be matriculated really in real life, in real time about what it is to age because in our household, there were individuals of all ages. And so aging seemed relatively normal. Now, when I was in California for 30 years and my children were at the university here, they lived with my mother and cared for my mother. So they too, how they developed that, I'm not really sure, but they took on the responsibility of remaining with her. They weren't asked. They just decided that that's what they needed to do. So it's a value that runs in the family. And like you said, not all people have that opportunity. Yes, well, and Merle, having worked for hospice care here in my chaplaincy work with Bristol Hospice, OIE, I did encounter that as a value in many families and somewhat almost culturally esteemed value. I take voice lessons from Buzz Tenant and he came back from Germany to take care of his parents, his aging parents. That was the only reason he came back. And... So many people do that here regardless of ethnicity, although in some cultures, it's ingrained in the culture itself. But I also noticed that many culture, individuals of different cultures that don't have that necessarily or is not so obviously holding that as a value do come home. No matter where they are in the world, which is quite interesting and fortunate for our community. I wanted to share with you that when I approached, when I approached the age of 50 and then on to 65, I have to admittedly say that I was in total denial of my age. So when people asked me how old you are, I wouldn't tell them. Primarily because I was in denial and I told them that. However, recently with the awareness of, particularly my spiritual awareness, I really grappled with that concept of aging. And the things that I grappled with were things that, of course, we hear all the time as older adults were incompetent, were debilitated, we're not up to par. And we don't hold the position in the community as we did while we were maturing and while we were actively working. And the other thing is just the angst of being older. My body aches, I have things going on, I have to do more now to just keep myself fit. It seems at least, it seems to be, it kind of fits in that category called struggle. Well, more so than it used to be. More so than it used to be. So I think that one of the things that occurred to me is that that's the reality and I need to learn to accept it. And in the front end of that process, acceptance looked like submission, submission to the reality that I was getting older. Now I look at acceptance as a way of receiving an opportunity and doing something about it. I'm in control of my aging. And I finally at some point got that. And I mean, I guess it should be, right? Working with older adults, but somehow I was still in denial. But just recently I did come to the conclusion that I have an opportunity here. I mean, I always felt like I had an opportunity. My life purpose has always been about serving others and sharing love, consistent with the Allah spirit. Merle, I want to restate what you have just said that I think is so important. And that is that acceptance is not surrender. It's not submission. It's not resolving into being a victim, but rather it's seeing, reframing your life in such a way that it has wonderful opportunity and wonderful things before you, whatever they may be. And it doesn't have to be the same kind of activity that you've done in the past, but it is a new presence of awareness within yourself of who you are and what you're about. I have one phrase that I really like. It's a book that I, my denomination, Presbyterian church, I'm a Presbyterian pastor and my denomination had a program called Moving from Roll R-O-L-E to Soul, S-O-U-L. So I think this is a kind of spiritual shift that really that little phrase captures the spiritual shift of movement between these two stages of life. And you stated it so well. Acceptance is not a movement from activity to victimhood. It's a movement of accepting that there's a new life and a change and something of a great value and worth. So take us into what else you wanna share. I wanna add one more piece to that. Okay. One more piece to that is that acceptance is not about being a victim, but being a hero for your story. Great. So I choose to be a hero and I choose to have the work that I do shared among others who may not have had the background education or experiences that has caused me to be here today. Beautifully expressed. So when I joined the Waikiki Community Center, I was asked to produce this program called Active Aging. And I did my research, like we all do. I did my research and I discovered a white paper written by Dr. Cullen Hayashita who is a gerontologist and has for many, many, many years worked on issues related to aging. He has a doctorate from the University of Hawaii, did his undergraduate, I think at the University of Washington, has written many papers, developed programs and is the founder of the Kupuna Center at Kapiolani Community College. Oh. And to this day, he continues his work and his effort. Marvelous. Back when I first met Cullen, which is about seven years ago, he talked about, there was a lot of conversation in the legislature about the aging community. And the estimate was that 20% of our population would be 65 or older by 2030. Well, here's the 2020 census. We're at 19.6%. This is 2030 now, they're projecting it for. And in Waikiki, we're at 20%. So 20% of our population in Waikiki is over 65. And just keep in mind that our programs are targeted to 50 plus. Yes. Yes. So, Dr. Hayashita, like I said, wrote this paper and basically what he said to the legislators and to the state, there is no way that we can sustain sick care for our older adults. And so we have to look at another alternative. And that alternative is to extend the healthy lifehood of our older adults. And so how do we do that? Excellent. Yes. So if I can have the model, the circle, the wheel, Michael. There it is. So active aging is a lifestyle that acknowledges that even as we age, we have the capacity to grow, contribute, engage during our natural lifespan. The goal is to increase our healthy life expectancy beyond retirement, our healthy life expectancy beyond retirement. So if you look at the graphic on active aging, you see all the sections of the facets. So let's start at the very top at 12 o'clock on the graphic and look at this concept called life long learning and development. And what I will do is walk through all the programs that are being offered at the Waikiki Community Center that address these facets and how we go about doing that. That sounds good if we can do it. Go ahead. Just that you keep the pace up for us so we can get through it all. We have 15 minutes. I'll be quick. I'll be as quick as I can. I know. Life long learning and development. So examples, we did success tips on aging with Dr. Greg Ewen. We did the history of Waikiki with Peter Apol. We also offer things like ukulele, hula, writing, English as a second language and more. And we also take our older adults on tours that we talk about the history of the islands and the kingdom of Hawaii and on and on and on. We do technology training and zoom and cell phone and computer use training. In the area of community, we have many projects but the projects I'm most excited about are our active civic engagement projects. We did Waikiki Safe Walk where we monitored the quality of our sidewalks, the traffic lights, the traffic, the people speeding through Waikiki, the skateboarders, et cetera. We followed that with something called Waikiki Safe where we attempted and we continue to do this to train especially our older adults in Waikiki on disaster preparedness. On the area of family and relationships, we have many social activities, painting, games, tours, in the area of finances and legal issues, the University of Hawaii, Richardson School of Law has shared with us frequently how to plan for your future. Wills, estate planning, advanced care directors and in financing, we usually find a financial advisor that's willing to come and do a presentation for us. Health and fitness is pretty logical. Zumba, Pilates, yoga, hula, line dancing, et cetera. Spirituality, that area, well, I'll call on you, Larry, to talk about that because Larry's going to be a special guest presenter over three sessions. In regards to housing, we've brought people in about home modifications in the area of paid work, unpaid work and volunteerism. Like I said, I go back to the civic engagement projects where we literally call the whole community in to participate as volunteers. We even did sidewalk patching with the city. Talk about proactive, but all of these have begun because our older adults have brought to us complaints of the street situation in Waikiki. So we just put projects together and move towards activism and see if we can make for a more age-friendly Waikiki. Well, you've listened to the people and you're responding with programs in that whole circle of life that are meaningful to the community and to individuals. And it sounds to me, Merle, like your programming takes shape around those complaints or those interests as they get expressed. The ones, yes. The ones that we get when we start to bring in not only our community of older adults, but we literally partner with organizations. We partner with volunteer groups with KCC, with the University of Hawaii School of Social Work with the City of Honolulu Planning Department. So whatever it takes, we try to find collaborators because what we're attempting to do is to build a force for change. Now, I can't say that we've, I can't tell you how well we've done except that our community of older adults know that when they bring a complaint to me that it's likely gonna turn into something else. Terrific. Terrific. So the other thing I wanted to point out in the area of community is that we've initiated a project called EBAH Show. I-B-A-S-H-O, and it is a concept of community. I see the sign. A concept of community developed by, after the tsunami in Japan, the typhoon in the Philippines and the earthquake in Nepal. And it's creating a place of belonging where older adults are honored and respected and expected actually to become involved in their community with intergenerational activities. But it's wholly guided and run by the older adults. As the representative at the community center, I'm just holding the space and providing space. So we're at the beginning of this process to build a community within a community. Excellent, Merle. That's, you're such a visionary. And then you also make sure things get done. That's great. I would like to plug my own program with you. Yeah, talk about your, talk about the spirituality. Three Wednesdays in April. The first three Wednesdays in April. I'm intrigued that we have in our stage of life a unique spirituality. And it has to do, and my program has to do with five spiritual tasks of aging, which help you to incorporate a new life and to have an extraordinary elderhood. So I'm going to address those April 7th, 14th and 21st, at one o'clock, I think it is. And the Waikiki Community Center. Merle, this has been so wonderful. And not only have we not, have we seen the program ideas that you bring forward, but we also see the rationale beneath it and the, and to understand the rationale. And actually I can imagine an elder adopting that circle of life for their own mirror and to look in that in the mornings and say, well, what am I going to focus on today? Which piece of the pie am I going to consume today? Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And what do I, what do I need from that? And what do I want from that? And what are some goals that I can set in each one of those pieces of pie and enjoy? That's just so, so helpful, Merle. Well, do you have to be a living Waikiki to enjoy your- No, no, the program's actually is open to anyone who lives on Oahu. So we oftentimes have people that cross the poly in order to participate in our programs. No, you don't have to. And you don't have to be a member per se. Now we have, actually, there's a special discount going on for what we call, we don't call them members anymore. And what happens is that if you purchase this annual membership of your programs, your programs, your participation in exercise programs, activities, et cetera, is discounted. This is a wonderful opportunity. And I think that we're wise to put that in our package of resources that we have for our lives. Merle, thank you so very much. You have been a delight to listen to. And the Waikiki Community Center is a tremendous resource for ourselves and our community. And I'm sure there are many who will, as a result of this, begin to tune in and to participate and take advantage of what you so beautifully have constructed here. Thank you. And could I plug in our website? Could I mention that? Sure, go ahead one more time on the website. Okay, website, www.waikikicommunitiescenter.org. Very simple, spell it all out. We look forward to seeing you. And please, let us know that you came as a result of Larry's program. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity, Larry. I really do appreciate this. You're very welcome, Merle. I'm happy to be a colleague with you. And me with you. Thank you. So don't just age, engage. Every two weeks here on Tuesday at two o'clock, if you're a male here, you probably have noticed that there's some difficulty in urinating. You probably have an enlarged prostate. Most men do. And two weeks from now, we're going to look at a man who had prostate cancer. I say had because he beat it without surgery. Wanna find out what he did? Two weeks from now, friend. Yeah. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.