Alison Webster is the adviser on social, political and community issues for the Church of England in Oxfordshire

Summer brings back memories of rainy family childhood holidays – and the peculiar pain of compulsory Monopoly.

So tortured was I by the game that I devised a survival strategy all of my own: I flipped a mental switch and redefined ‘winning’.

If I finished with the least property and money, I declared myself the victor. On these terms I almost enjoyed playing to win.

It’s worth rethinking our cultural assumptions about winning. The pressure is on each one of us to succeed in life, but what do we think success looks like?

Success is youthful and healthy; it’s materially well-endowed; it’s beautiful and well-groomed. It’s about clever, shiny, happy people, with fulfilling relationships and impressive careers.

At a recent 24-hour national consultation on spirituality and ageing, organised by the St George’s House ‘think tank’ in Windsor, we wondered why we are, even in the church, so prone to devaluing and denigrating older people.

Three words emerged. Vulnerability. Frailty. Dependence. Can you be successful if you exhibit any of these characteristics?

Not in conventional terms. These are problematic concepts in a culture that values self-determination, power and autonomy.

But we need to flip a collective mental switch and get real. Each and every one of us enters the world dependent and vulnerable, and we will all leave this life the same way.

During our lives we will experience periods of physical illness, mental distress and emotional upheaval.

We will not always have the work we want and need, and we may be economically poor as a result. We may lose loved ones, our homes or our self esteem. None of these situations is about failure. They are about being human. Being human means needing other people.

We try to protect and insulate ourselves from this reality. We delude ourselves that we can ‘go it alone’. Especially those of us who are currently healthy and making ends meet. We think we are autonomous, but actually we are simply precarious.

For several years now the Diocese of Oxford has invested in a project called SCOP: Spiritual Care of Older People. SCOP is about flipping cultural switches. Its conviction is that if we can end our denial, as a society, that we will become old and die, many of the attitudes that surround us will be transformed – including attitudes to ageing, illness and death. We will begin to value differently the role of those who are facing the challenges now of frailty, vulnerability and dependence. Instead of shoving older people out of sight and out of mind, we will be desperate to learn lessons from them about those experiences of life we may one day face ourselves. And SCOP releases older people to talk about those things that society makes taboo. For instance, it has run a pilot course in Witney called ‘Living in the End Times’, providing a safe space for older people to talk about preparing for the dying process: their fears, anxieties, hopes and beliefs.

We’re also working to promote ‘dementia-friendly churches’, and seeking to develop intergenerational contact through storytelling.

For, old and young, we depend on one another.