Pilgrimage: Intrinsic Motivation and Active Behavior in the Eldery

Can intrinsic religious motivation have relevant effects on the motor activity of older people? How are processions and pilgrimages related to the dominant imagination of old age as a period of fatigue and gray hair, suffering and loneliness, retirement and rest – and of waiting: waiting for a call from a loved one, waiting for the visit of a good companion, or, finally, expecting the end of life?

This study is based on interviews with people from different countries, cultures, and religions.

They show that a pilgrimage can push the elderly to do physical activities of some importance that are at the same time related to some sort of religious motivation.

The pilgrim’s walking in itself, as well as the achievement of its goal, helps people to reconsider their quality of life and active behavior. Elderly people also experience their independence, which perhaps was considered to be lost, with a pilgrimage, giving a new meaning to their aging. In light of these activities, old age becomes a period not just of physical and mental decay, but of self-discovery. It becomes an age that allows one to do something that one has not done during one’s youth. And pilgrimages give people time to discover themselves – they have the chance to work on their own personality and social identity. This contributes to the understanding of their health and of their quality of life in a deeper sense.