Measuring Contentment
Polls taken on Americans have repeatedly found that older Americans feel more contented than younger Americans. This seems, on the surface, rather strange. If someone asked me, would I choose to be age 25 again instead of over 75, the answer would be yes. And yet I am one of those older people who feel I am more contented today than at any age in the past. Below are some of the points made by the latest study on contentment in Americans.
Research: Older adults are happiest Americans
- By LINDSEY TANNER
MEDICAL WRITER
CHICAGO
- A certain amount of distress in old age is inevitable, including aches, pains and deaths of loved ones and
- friends.But older people generally have learned to be more content with what they have than younger adults, Yang said.
This is partly because older people have learned to lower their expectations and accept their achievements, said Duke University aging expert Linda George. An older person may realize "it's fine that I was a schoolteacher and not a Nobel prize winner."
While younger blacks and poor people tended to be less happy than whites and wealthier people, those differences faded as people aged.
In general, the odds of being happy increased 5% with every 10 years of age.
Overall, about 33% of Americans reported being very happy at age 88, versus about 24% of those age 18 to their early 20s. And throughout the study years, most Americans reported being very happy or pretty happy; less than 20% said they were not too happy.
It's all good news for the aging population. However, Yang's study also found that baby boomers were the least happy. They could end up living the unfortunate old-age stereotype if they can't let go of their achievement-driven mind-set, said George, the Duke aging expert.
So far, Baby Boomers aren't lowering their aspirations at the same rate earlier generations did. "They still seem to believe that they should have it all," George said. "They're still thinking about having a retirement that's going to let them do everything they haven't done yet."
Previous research also has shown that mid-life tends to be the most stressful time, said Cornell University sociologist Elaine Wethington. "Everyone's asking you to do things and you have a lot to do. You're less happy because you feel hassled." End of statements from the study.
Repeatedly in my musings is the notion that the goal of life is to maximize our level of contentment. Also pushed is the idea that our level of contentment is largely based on the extent we follow the Golden Rule—the inference here being that both the receiver and giver both then reach higher levels of contentment. Contentment, it is suggested, has little to do with EXCESS power, wealth, physical attractiveness, intelligence, athletic skills, popularity, fame, and so on PAST a certain level. Be all this as it may, just how do we measure contentment anyway?
In this musing I am going to wing it using my own thoughts on how I measure my contentment level. For a start, contentment levels sort of relate to the levels of stress hormones in our body. Not at any given moment, but more the chronic levels. It is sort of a lack of stress=contentment. Part of stress, like any other aspect of our particular life, depends to some extent on genetics and our environment. Our genetics we can’t change, our environment sometimes we can. On top of this everything here gets mixed in with acquired attitudes, values, addictions, compulsive behaviors, and personalities. It’s complicated.
So in this musing the goal is to measure our contentment level by our mental state regarding certain parts of our life.
First, the object is to wake up mornings with the least amount of stress about the day to follow. This is more difficult to achieve in our formative and productive years. Too many things on our plate can be stressful. But we also need remember that achievements, which are important to contentment, are rarely achieved without some self or outside stress to motivate us along. It is not surprising that an older population has more contentment. A lot of the stresses in the productive years are no longer necessary—EXCEPT some people can’t let go which often means the stress is there and they are no longer in a position to do much about this stress. Letting go is a positive thing and this includes various aspects of our lives.
Each retired person has to let go of different things in different ways. For me it became obligatory to let go in various areas of my life. This list would differ from one person to another. I gave up a highly landscaped acreage and sizable house because it is was hard to be contented with so many obligatory yard and housekeep demands on my time.
Plus, everyone need accept their ever increasing physical and mental limitations with age. So I moved to a high rise condo where everyday I do what I want to do as often and long as I want to do whatever. That’s a big chunk of stress gone right there.
Then there are the social obligations that we amassed over time in our productive years. This includes family, friends, co-workers, and the less fortunate in life. By the time most people reach retirement they are entitled to reduce the stress from these varied social involvements. Those who still try to be an active parent to their offspring will find increased stress here as the real goal of parenthood ought to be one of having raised offspring to be independent adults. It is stressful not to be able to let go. The real obligation now falls on offspring to provide meaningful support for the parents just as the parents provided meaningful support to offspring during their formative years. The actual situation here is all over the place, but each parent has to establish the least stressful approach toward adult offspring. Parents will have little luck dictating a successful interaction with adult children. One of the least rewarding situations is to place monetary support or future inheritance over the head of any offspring. American culture is a real failure here. The primary responsibility is to raise children responsibly during their formative years. After that, any future support should be the responsibility of government, no matter the form, toward all adult citizens. Excess wealth fairly earned during anyone’s life should be returned to society upon death so all young people have a more level playing field. Just handing a lot of money to adult offspring is not going to generate any real contentment to such offspring. They need to earn their own successes just like other young people. Genetic cabals of wealth have never served well any civilization. Parents who go down this road create needless stress for themselves and amongst their offspring.
As a general rule, those in their terminational years need to find ways to amuse themselves independently of others. This is a very difficult task if one has developed a lifestyle in which others are depended on to give meaning to our lives. These others tend to fade away for one reason or another as our older years progress. Offspring have their own lives to live, spouses die, go in different directions, or themselves are medically limited to be able to provide the kind of meaningful support they may have given earlier in life. Grandchildren grow older and increasingly have their own peer support and attachments. Neighbors, colleagues, previous sport mates, church congregations, and all sorts of group attachments become frayed or lost for all kinds of natural reasons. It is easy to misjudge the duty of others as some sort of noble and obligated duty, when the reality is that we have become pests or irrelevant. Now that we have more time to do things, we fail to realize that many others don’t have the time to spend with us doing this or that. For example, I thought when I retired I would travel more, or pay more attention to others, or deal more in person with the less fortunate in life. Our plans may or may not work out so well with the others as we envision doing more of the things we like to do with them. That can be very stressful. Part of the trouble is that almost everyone lives for a better future. If others are in their formative or productive years, the elderly by definition are not much of their future, but the past. Often, the more we increase our efforts to be part of their life, the greater the odds we have become a rather annoying pest.
I love to tell the story of this gal who said to me once years ago, “How come you get invitations to join the younger people in the building and I don’t?” I smiled and replied “Because you would be foolish enough to attend.” People don’t dislike older people, but they do dread older people becoming a pest. They want to be nice, and often are, but they usually are not going to welcome us in as a major player in their lives. When we think otherwise we are often irrational. Most of the problems those in their formative years or productive years face, are not problems we can solve for them. If we cannot, as individuals in our terminational years, accept that times change—when they always do—and simply let the next generation do their thing as our generation did our thing—well, the scene becomes a nightmare for those elderly who want badly to impart their ‘aged wisdom’ on the next generation. I, for example, live in a high rise condominium building, and have the time to become involved in condo matters, but I accept that those in their productive years should run this show. I don’t show up at association meetings and lead any charges about anything—and others know well my attitude—I will abide by whatever the majority wants, and if I don’t like it here at some point, I will move elsewhere. No one really wants to hear a lot of “In my day”, “My past experience has demonstrated”, “Others I have talked to feel”, “I, for one, demand” and so on. Instead we are better to ‘let it go’ for our sake, and theirs.
In short, our ability to be satisfied in the grandstands, watching the show, relates directly to our own level of personal contentment. After all, I will be dead sooner, rather than in some distant future, so if I cease to be at any point now, there is no tragedy. 75 years is a long time to have had a good life. The tragedies are those who die young or never had much of a good life and still are suffering. Perspective is everything. If we cannot keep things in proper perspective our terminational years will be stressful. If we can’t accept death, our terminational years will not be contented ones. If we cannot go gently down the stream and find ways to amuse ourselves, it is going to be a frustrated and futile existence for us in our terminational years. It need be remembered that terminational years have nothing to do with contentment or happiness or unhappiness etc——it is a time span, period. The last lap in our terminational years, the dying process, will come soon enough and be short or long and drawn out. That is a total another matter.
Every phase of life necessitates dealing with sadness, disappointments, challenges, losses, and bumps of all sorts. Now what would motivate anyone to insist, when older, that they want to stay on the playing field and be involved in the rough and tumble game of life? What non stressful outcome can possibly come of that?. Recently I attended some huge horse show, an acrobatic entertainment spectacle in which a balcony ticket was $144.00 before parking fee, taxes, program, popcorn, etc. Normally, I would not spend that kind of money for any kind of show. So I went, by myself, as I usually go to a lot of places by myself. The couple next to me were somewhat old, not ancient like me, and were a delight throughout the show. The gal next to me suddenly remarked, why are you here alone? I replied, “You want the truth? If I were to pressure someone else to come with me, God only knows what kind of event I might be pressured to attend with them in the future.” My goal, remember, is to do the kind of things I want to do every day as the spirit moves me. I told the couple, “As far as amusing me, this show and the two of you are doing an excellent job. We are having a lot of laughs and seeing some spectacular acts, just a perfect situation, at least for me.” At the end of the show they asked if maybe we should have dinner together some time. I smiled and replied, “And talk about what—your grandchildren or my health, or our different careers, and so on—when none of this is relevant to us personally in our daily lives. We live an hour and a half apart.” “He replied, “You really are different, but in a pleasant way”. They were taking UBER home and volunteered to have the driver drop me off at the suburban train station. I thanked them but pointed out part of the pleasure that day was the walk to the nearest bus which would take me to the train station. It would be a new walk through different terrain and I enjoy that. That I love to walk (no power walk) for lengthy walks and sort of take in everything I see during a walk and get to think about whatever topic I want while walking, is a blessing. Things I love to do don’t cost much money at all. Now how lucky can I be? That horse show was a rare exception for me, there are precious few shows worth $144 to see. Frankly, I had to weigh spending my money on that show or putting it in my FANAFI Fund where it would pay for 70 unfortunate young kids to get vaccinated against diseases which can kill them. The FANAFI Fund usually wins because I am lucky enough that the things I like to do don’t cost much money. Everything is relative. It is not like I have to sacrifice the things I like to do in order to give out monetary grants to those charities which make life better for the less fortunate. It’s win-win for me and those less fortunate. Luck is always involved in life.
We all, to varying degrees, understand that diversity is important for progress in the evolutionary process. Too often though, we try so hard to peg diversity in terms of right and wrong, sinners and non sinners, or good and evil. Forget that. Ethics is all about The Golden Rule and we all understand that is an ethical principle.
As we get older, for most older people excitement and new challenges are no longer a priority. Been there and done that. The terminational years provide the time for us to review our past life, condense as much of it as we can into practical understandings of life, and seek the peace which comes with solitude and activities which we can still enjoy by ourselves. The object is simple enough—to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, practice the golden rule with our time or money, be pleasant natured with those with whom we come in contact, tap as often as we can into the goodness most people have to offer us, let the next generation run the show, and if our financial situation is ample enough, we can enjoy every day, bad health not withstanding. While we can measure our contentment level as described in this musing, we can’t measure the contentment level of others. We can, individually and collectively through government, measurably increase the contentment level of others via the Golden Rule. Family values is more relevant during the formative years. After these years are past, it is human values which become the focal point and this has been true for all the prophets in all the major religions.
A legitimate question arises thusly: What about someone whose whole adult life was involved round the clock with social interactions of some sort—their kids, friends, co-workers, church members, politics, whatever? Is it realistic to tell them to just find ways to amuse themselves? Perhaps getting very active in charitable organizations is the answer for them. This way they get the social interaction they crave and yet do so without becoming a pest to those in their productive years who just don’t have the time to amuse an older person. I can remember my grandmother, who had like 7 offspring, literally whine to me, maybe a ten year old kid, that none of her adult kids paid much attention to her. I would wander cross country for the sake of something to do and visit her before returning. To get the attention of her adult kids she would take one family out to Sunday dinner every Sunday. I hated those outings because sitting through church all morning, and then half the afternoon out to some restaurant was torture for me. The Devil in me made me ask the puzzling question in my mind: “Why does Grandma always pay for the meal?” There was stunned silence. Then one of my parents sort of mumbled that “Grandma enjoys taking us out to dinner”. Logic in my mind then dictated “But didn’t she pay for your meals for all the years you were young?”. I guess I wasn’t the easiest kid to raise. But this issue stuck with me all my life and when I was an adult it was a rare time when I allowed my parents to buy me a meal. They argued they could afford it. And I would retort that if they wanted to be kind, be kind to those who are less fortunate. I think most parents in their terminational years want to feel gratitude from their offspring. The only thing someone in their terminational years owes to their offspring is some independence and that only happens when the older parent has found ways to amuse himself/herself most of the time.
Today modern medicine can keep us alive for decades more than in the not so distant past. There are many medical conditions which leave a parent in need of constant attention. We all have seen dedicated offspring spend decades caring for an invalid parent. I still have no perfect answer for this. This treatise here obviously does not apply to an invalid parent. At least not in the sense that the parent should just find ways to amuse themselves. But I also mentioned that after the formative years it is the government which is responsible for the special needs of all adult citizens. That means round the clock care should be provided by our collective tax base. Do I know how much tax money this would require to provide proper care for all adult invalids? A lot, but then I have never been one of those who feels government should stay out of our private lives and let capitalism run amuck with few or no regulations and no limits. It is no accident that those countries which rank highest on the happiness scale are those countries which provide basic needs for all their citizens. None of these people have to worry about good health care, good education, decent wages, employment, and so on. The basic needs are there for all citizens. Of course the trade off is high taxation. While many Americans struggle and worry about many basic needs, in these other countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, etc they are left with pleasant decisions about what to do with the money left over from taxation. America is basically a dog eat dog society and proud of it—well I guess the less fortunate are a tad less happy.
While some people use religion as the basis for adhering to the Golden Rule, far more religious people end up using religion as a cover for their selfish ‘family values’ mentality. The focus in almost entirely on themselves, they circle the wagons, then flail away at all the perceived ‘heathens’ here, there, and everywhere. While claiming their religious belief is one of peace and tolerance their feelings are one of hate, distrust, and desire to make others follow their own inherited religious rituals, practices, and behaviors. And whenever they manage to literally attack these heathens it is never enough to kill them outright but cruelly kill them in the most torturous way available at the time and location. Religious wars are the most brutal and cruel imaginable. They burn witches at the stake, behead people, torture them in captivity, among other ways which vary from era to era way back to when stoning people to death or quartering them alive after hours of painful torture, etc. But religion also often affects the believers in their terminational phase of life. Religious people tend to be scared to death of dying. This “am I going to Heaven?” mentality becomes a livid feeling with which to deal. We all have heard too many people wail “Why is God letting all this happen to me?”. And worst, they never feel they can have a peaceful dignified death when they have had enough of life, but are required to hang in there and let God decide when enough is enough—OR ELSE they are going to Hell. The difficult fact is this: until by law people are allowed to control their own dying process, then each individual will have to themselves arrange a peaceful and dignified death when they have had enough. Or, have made plans with friends to accomplish this if they are mentally incapable of accomplishing this themselves. Some states now allow letting the patient control their dying process, but only if several doctors will sign off that they will be dead in 3 months. That doesn’t do much for those with Alzhiemer’s and any number of neuro-muscular disorders, and so on.
This fits in here because knowing that we can control our own dying process takes a lot of fear out of dying. Heaven or no Heaven, we don’t have to fear dying, it is a natural consequence of birth. Nobody is turning over in their grave about anything. We don’t fret about not having been alive for the millions of previous years in the evolutionary process and why the hell would we fuss about not being around in the probable endless years in the future evolutionary process? The attitude which should predominate, especially in the terminational years, is gratitude that happenstance gave us life. We won the lottery when a particular sperm united with a particular egg.
In summary, each individual in their terminational years should give thought to their own nature, own situation, and try to find ways to amuse themselves in ways which do not make themselves a pest/burden to others where and when this is possible. When we live long enough it has been said we become twice a child. Studies have shown that young people are not the happiest or most contented segment of society. Of course not, so much to learn, so much to endure, so little control over their own lives. The whole point here is simply this: when possible, as often as possible, every person after retirement should try to find ways to amuse themselves and let those in their productive years manage their own lives. This maximizes contentment for all concerned. I often wonder how these ‘nuclear’ ‘family value’ families celebrate holidays in any meaningful way. After all, they are in each other’s face most days all year long. Having said this I suspect it is not always a bad thing. As so often is the reality, what works for one may not work for another, so I will cover myself with the following:
Most of my musings are hardly the comprehensive last word about any topic. At best a few ideas get tossed around and sometimes a few questions answered or things to ponder provided, but they end because I tire of writing about the topic or am missing any more ideas on the topic. These musing weren’t written to educate others, but to organize my own thoughts so I achieve more understanding about the topics. It’s a selfish venture, one that enables me to feel more contented about life, myself, and others. My musings are not professional publications, properly proofread, all resources properly listed, nor any claim that the topic has been carefully researched to death. Essentially, it is just my peculiar way to have one more way to amuse myself in my terminational phase of life. Of course in the process Google gets a workout, past readings get utilized, and my own life experiences incorporated into the musing in question.
