No, you are not some faulty machinery

You are happily cycling along the bike path while taking in the smell of the Dutch tulips and the view of the Dutch canals and windmills. Suddenly your left foot loses its ground and you tumble to the ground. You manage to get back up and realises at a closer inspection that the pedal has fallen off. What do you do? You probably find some way to take your bike to a bike repair shop and get her to fix it and voila, you are back on the road again. This is how it works. Machines function in a certain way and if something goes wrong, the solution is to find the broken part, fix it and all is well. Most people see age-related challenges the same way; individual parts start to break down through wear and tear and so we try as best we can to fix them. Maybe a new knee, a new hip or a pacemaker is what it takes, and the person will work again. But because the parts are starting to get close to their use-by-date, they get harder and harder to fix and this has consequences for other parts too. As a result, the person no longer works – the machinery is faulty and has no purpose anymore.