When we talk about volunteering, there is an overt focus on the saviourism of the Volunteer. It is presented as one-sided interaction and does not commend itself for direct enjoyability of the Volunteer.
When you are in a university environment, there subsists a bizarre sense of immortality. Universities are an artificial amalgamation of 18–21-year-olds, we have little opportunity to interact with the elderly and our lives are entirely constructed around what it is to be young, healthy, and able. Crudely, volunteering with Age UK with the Puzzle Society seemed like a ‘good deed’ and I prepared for an afternoon of forced conversation and glib utterances. This sentiment assumed one generic notion of the elderly; that they would bore us. This arrogance was misplaced and illogical in equal part.
The meeting room was full of noise and liveliness when we arrived, and everybody had something to say. There was brightness and vivacity, humour, serious conversations, holiday pictures and obviously, puzzles. But more than anything, there was respect, and an afternoon spent in the guileless activity of conversation with strangers. The experience was calming and of mutual benefit. It is true that many of the elderly people we visited expressed gratitude for our visit or shared their feelings of loneliness. But it was myself and many others in the society who were favoured with stories from a past and present that we had no idea of and were the ones being entertained.
In the post-Covid period and current cost-of-living crisis, it is the elderly that have been hit hardest. When I was a child, my father would say that you can tell a great deal from a society by how they treat their elderly. Currently in the UK the basic needs of the elderly have been debased from priority and the young appeared to have lost any sense of interest in their perspectives. Older people have come to be defined by views and attitude despised in the 21st century. The superciliousness of this view, which I myself have been guilty of, was entirely unfounded as we discovered when conversing with the men and women at Age UK. To talk and to be listened to is one of the greatest joys taken greatly for granted. What we found in meeting everyone at Age UK is that the primary inhibition the elderly has in socialising is access. Age UK provides the space and opportunity for this simple pleasure, but it is so important that student groups take the time to occasionally quit their sphere and interact with people from whom they can learn and challenge their perceptions of others, and themselves.
I went to volunteer unconsciously puffed up on my own consequence of what Age UK could receive from the visit from Puzzle Society. In short, I left understanding how much the elderly people we met had to give and how much we need to encourage and engage in an opportunity reciprocal in benefit and enjoyment.
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