Happy: Enjoying good of any kind, such as comfort, peace, or tranquility; content; satisfied; having no objection.
I look up words and I often end up doubled over in laughter. If you had asked me to provide a definition of "happiness" I would have come up with a lot of extreme adjectives which I guess is befitting of a man who loves to be on the knife edge of things. I wouldn't have used words like comfort or peace or satisfaction. Happiness is getting what you want - a lot of what you want - not being satisfied with what you have.
I've been reading a steady selection of non-fiction books that seem applicable to some of the difficulties that have existed in my own mind, if not in actual reality. I'm not even sure that calling them "difficulties" is the right approach - a more appropriate phrase would be "shit that's going on that isn't to my liking." I've read books about depression, dealing with anxiety, gaining some perspective on the aging process, processing the grief caused by the death of loved ones, but wait! There's more! Order now and receive a set of ginseng gutting knives!!
I look up words and I often end up doubled over in laughter. If you had asked me to provide a definition of "happiness" I would have come up with a lot of extreme adjectives which I guess is befitting of a man who loves to be on the knife edge of things. I wouldn't have used words like comfort or peace or satisfaction. Happiness is getting what you want - a lot of what you want - not being satisfied with what you have.
I've been reading a steady selection of non-fiction books that seem applicable to some of the difficulties that have existed in my own mind, if not in actual reality. I'm not even sure that calling them "difficulties" is the right approach - a more appropriate phrase would be "shit that's going on that isn't to my liking." I've read books about depression, dealing with anxiety, gaining some perspective on the aging process, processing the grief caused by the death of loved ones, but wait! There's more! Order now and receive a set of ginseng gutting knives!!
The following are a few thoughts from the old old individuals who make up the heart of the book.
I don’t understand happiness only as someone just always smiling and laughing. It’s more like inner happiness, where you feel you have done everything right in your life, you haven’t made anybody unhappy. You have a certain kind of peace and balance in yourself, and you are not anxious about what will happen the next minute or the next day. You let it go and you don’t worry, and you lead a balanced life. If you want the next moment where everything will be better, then you’d better do this moment right. People often asked him if he was happy, he said, and his response was always the same: of course he was.
But he chose not to dwell on his problems or spend time with people who did. He mostly avoided people his own age . . . because they tended to talk about their physical ailments or those of others. His ailments took enough out of him; why should he give them more of himself willingly? Happiness didn't require effort on his part, and came as a kind of peace. All he had to do was sit back and let it wash over him. Life gave him what he needed if he was wise enough to accept it.
But he chose not to dwell on his problems or spend time with people who did. He mostly avoided people his own age . . . because they tended to talk about their physical ailments or those of others. His ailments took enough out of him; why should he give them more of himself willingly? Happiness didn't require effort on his part, and came as a kind of peace. All he had to do was sit back and let it wash over him. Life gave him what he needed if he was wise enough to accept it.
Fred hadn’t always felt this way. When he was younger, he said, he thought happiness was something he had to go out and seize. It led to a lot of mistakes in his life, mostly out of restlessness with what he had. He described instead a view from old age—taking satisfaction in what was available right now, not hitching it to the future. My definition looked forward; Fred’s found fulfillment in the present, because the future might not come.
Then this insight gleaned from all of the interviewees . . .
Their strategies often boiled down to the same thing: spend your dwindling time and energy on the things you can still do that give you satisfaction, not on lamenting those you once did but now can't. Gerontologists call this "selective optimization with compensation:" older people make the most of what they have left and compensate for what they have lost.
Experience helps older people moderate their expectations and makes them more resilient when things don't go as hoped. When they do have negative experiences they don't dwell on them as much as younger people do. Researchers call this "the positivity effect."
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