Today, Korea is aging faster than other countries, and we are living
in an era of 100-year life expectancy due to the increase in life
expectancy. Regret and fear caused by the prolonged old age are leading
to death anxiety, depression, addiction, and...
Today, Korea is aging faster than other countries, and we are living
in an era of 100-year life expectancy due to the increase in life
expectancy. Regret and fear caused by the prolonged old age are leading
to death anxiety, depression, addiction, and suicide attempts, which are
expanding into social problems. In order to solve these problems, it is
necessary to understand the experiences and wisdom of the elderly who
live healthily in old age.
The purpose of this study is to understand the meaning and essence
of the Christian elderly's experiences in literary activities. In addition,
we seek to deeply understand the experience of literary activities from
the perspective of Christian elderly’s and provide materials for effective
counseling.
The research questions are: First, what is the experience of Christian
elderly's literary activities? Second, what is the meaning of the
experience of Christian elderly's literary activities?
The research method applied Giorgi's phenomenology. The study
participants selected 8 Christian elderly’s over 65 years of age who are
active in the Korean 00 Literature Association by intentional sampling.
The data of the study was collected through in-depth interviews from
June 2023 to October 2023, and Giorgi's four-step process was applied
to the analysis method.
As a result of the study, first, the experiences of the Christian
elderly’s in literary activities were derived into 120 central meanings, 22
revealed themes, and 7 essential themes. The essential themes were
'motivation', 'exercise of potential', 'pursuit for self-growth', 'immersion
of the work activities', 'self-awareness of the role of Christian writers',
'deliberation for self-integration', and 'expression of self-openness'.
Second, the meaning of the experiences of the Christian elderly's in
literary activities was divided into a situational structure and a general
structure. The situational structural description revealed the experiences
based on the statements of the study participants, and the general
structural description described the relationship between the integrated
meanings of the study participants' changes in the experience of literary
activities. The research results on this are as follows.
The themes revealed in the first essential theme, motivation, consisted
of 'the influence of the father', 'the dream of a poet', 'the realization of
the importance of literature', and 'meeting with the literary people'. The
second essential theme, the theme revealed in the exercise of potential,
consisted of 'meeting with a good teacher' and 'making a book'. The
third essential theme, the theme revealed in the pursuit of self-growth,
consisted of 'being recognized by people', 'effort within the organization
to which one belongs', and 'fulfillment of needs'. The fourth essential
theme, the theme revealed in the immersion of the work activity
consisted of 'expression of creativity' and 'the immersion of writing'.
The fifth essential theme, the theme revealed in the awareness of the
role of the Christian writers, consisted of 'awareness of the poet',
'trying to leave the work of the Christian emotion', 'making a good
influence', and 'expressing a spiritual message'. The sixth essential
theme, the themes revealed in the deliberation for self-integration,
consisted of 'the thoughts of the mind are organized', 'loving myself',
'being emotionally cured', 'feeling the meaning and satisfaction of
being', 'feeling dreams and hopes'. The seventh essential theme, the
expression of self-openness, consisted of 'expansion of activity area'
and ' ommunity and talent donation'.
The significance of this study is that it studied the meaning and
essence of the Christian elderly's experiences in literary activities. The
results of this study are expected to be used as basic data in the field
of counseling for the elderly‘s for successful aging.