Don’t be a fish; be a frog. Swim in the water and jump when you hit ground. – Kim Young-ha
How happy are you?
Whatever.
Don’t mean to brag but I subscribe to Time magazine.
Couple weeks ago, with that aged crone Nancy Pelosi and a flag pin on the front cover, article caught my attention.
Ironically, a section called The View opens with a headline: The Surprising Joy Of Old Age. By Jeffrey Kruger. And the piece begins, in big letters,
If life wanted to mess with you, it couldn’t have come up with a better way than death. Especially the lead-up. Your strength flags; your world narrows; much of what once gave you pleasure and satisfaction is now gone. But as it turns out, happiness is still very much with you – often even more so than before.
Turn the page, turns out a whole bunch of your -ologists have long been intrigued by findings – “that old age is often a time defined not by sorrow, dread and regret but rather by peace, gratitude and fulfillment.”
Which we can all agree is a lot better.
But that’s not my favorite part. My favorite part goes like this:
Then, too, there is the business of wisdom. Evolutionarily, any species that hopes to stay alive has to manage its resources carefully. That means that first call on food and other goodies goes to the breeders and warriors and hunters and planters and builders and, certainly, the children, with not much left over for the seniors, who may be seen as consuming more than they’re contributing. But even before modern medicine extended life expectancies, ordinary families were including grandparents and even great-grandparents. That’s because what old folk consume materially, they give back behaviorally—providing a leveling, reasoning center to the tumult that often swirls around them.
See, right there. That’s what I do. Provide a leveling, reasoning center to the tumult that often swirls around me.
Happy now?
http://time.com/5363067/aging-happiness-old-age-psychology/