Seeking Happiness

 Kelii - 60 (a good spiritual Hawaiian friend from The Program).  "Practice detachment.  Do something and especially do something for someone else.  With anxiety if you think about it you'll never find the answer.  The answer comes in self-forgetting which happens when you're focused on someone besides yourself."

Jeff - 72 (a sponsee who is still pretty active).  Jeff and I talked about balance and compromise.  We both agree it's important to stay active . . . to the best of your ability.  Our brains send us messages of pain and fatigue so that we don't injure ourselves.  We should pay attention to those messages.  The question of the day is what exactly does that compromise look like?  He also worked in a technical field where he was tasked to find and solve problems so both of us have a tendency to keep looking for a solution that can be applied to fix something, to bring a system back to prime operating condition.  But sometimes whatever you're working on is so old that it's never again going to be as good as new.

Bruce - 84 (some dude in the park I met today while he was walking his dog.  I decided to ask him about getting older.  I don't really have much of a filter when it comes to talking to strangers, especially if it's someone I don't think I'll see again).  Bruce was just basically optimistic.  He does what he can and doesn't worry about what he can't do.  He didn't appear to have a ton on his schedule today.  He emphasized a good diet and staying active.  He has a set routine each day that he doesn't play tennis.  He was sharp and clear and just a little fat although his dog was friendly and morbidly obese.  He didn't appear to feel sorry for himself at all.  It didn't appear that walking his corpulent dog was going to leave him winded.  I felt like he didn't really understand what I was getting at or - more likely - he was telling me a simple truth with a twinkle in his eye.

Guy - 69 (another pool/hot tub friend).  Guy spent his life doing construction work so he's not in great shape physically, a fact that doesn't seem to bother him all that much.  Of all the people I've talked to so far he would be the one most justified in pitching a bitch about his ailments which are not aches and pains but just pain.  He seems to be used to not feeling well so not feeling well isn't out of the ordinary and consequently not something to focus on.

Nobody here has revealed any aging loopholes or pain avoidance exceptions.  So far.

A couple of quotes from psychology books I read after both my parents died . . . 

"Happiness is not something to go out and seize.  Happiness is taking satisfaction in what is available right now, not hitching it to the future.  Too often our definition of happiness looks forward.  The future is tricky - the future might not come."

"Here's the strategy: spend our time and energy on the things that give us satisfaction, not lamenting those that we could once do - or experience - but now can't.  "Selective optimization with compensation:" make the most of what we have and compensate for what we've lost."

And this from an interview from a man who is classified as old old - 85 and above . . . .

"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.”

I won’t think about what I have to do - I'm just going to do it, hoping that’s what my fate is.  If I have any problems that emerge I'm going to try to leave them alone for now, let time work on it.  I shouldn’t dwell on anything that's problematic - I'm going to try to leave it alone and as time goes along see if it straightens out by itself.  I cannot deal with it, so you, god, now it’s your job.  You work on it and I'll do something else.  And usually they do it.  Trust—that’s what I advise if anyone asks.  You have to trust your higher power.”