
Want to Be Happy? Think Like an Old Person (2017) - seventyhorses
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/nyregion/want-to-be-happy-think-like-an-old-person.html
======
maxxxxx
Some thoughts from someone who recently became an "old" person. Around turning
50 I suddenly realized that my life will probably be always somewhat similar
to what it is now. The big ambitions and dreams are gone so I don't feel that
much pressure to achieve anymore. Also at that age the options to change one's
life are pretty limited compared to being in your 20s. Which makes me much
more content compared to when I was younger. I have also accepted that I will
die some day.

I don't think younger people should adopt that mindset necessarily. It's good
to have ambition while you are young but maybe you shouldn't listen too much
to other people. In the end being young is hard. There are so many options for
living your life but there is no way to tell which one will be right for you.
So there is a lot of luck involved. Some people pick the right path. Many
don't.

~~~
komali2
>I have also accepted that I will die one day

How? I'm only 27 but every time I try to tackle this problem raw panic
prevents any reasonable thinking.

I've instead adopted a "when it happens I won't know" mindset and continue to
work towards extracting maximum enjoyment from life.

~~~
MrLeap
I'm 29 and comfortable with the thought of dying. Not looking forward to it,
but not frightened either. The "how" is just like anything else, practice.
Since you can only die once, you have to rely on the deaths of others you care
about to help you over your fear.

When I was in third grade, one of my brothers was murdered. I felt all the
panic of mortality, and intense, visceral grief -- etc that you might imagine.
A few years after that, a cousin was stabbed to death. I didn't know him much,
and I figured that was the reason why his funeral felt much easier.

My grandmother died in 2007, she was the sweetest lady you'd ever meet. It was
even "easier" than the cousin's funeral.

In 2009, an uncle died. In 2010, an aunt. Another aunt died in 2013.

Another one of my brothers always used to say that he never wanted a funeral.
When he died October 2016, some family threw him a funeral anyways. I felt
like I was doing his memory a solid by not going. At an earlier stage in my
life, when I was more self important -- I would have been livid at the family
who threw a funeral for someone who didn't want one in life. Now I know stuff
like that just doesn't matter.

The pain of losing a loved one has changed from an acute stabbing sensation in
my kidneys to somber waves that roll over me, then recede. Getting better at
coping with the deaths of those you love helps you come to terms with your own
mortality.

Basically, don't worry about it.

~~~
Clubber
You might once it starts becoming more statistically probable.

~~~
MrLeap
Probably not. I rolled my truck a few years ago, and my numbness persisted
even while windshields were shattering and up became down, then up and then
down over and over again. I wondered if I was going to die, and just
surrendered myself to physics.

If I ever fall feet first into a wood-chipper, I'll probably panic and try to
find a way out. The instinct to survive is still there. The existential dread
is just gone.

~~~
Clubber
Yes, well those are statistical anomalies. Once you get to a point where in a
perfect scenario, you may only have 40 years at best, or 25 years normally,
that weighs on your mind and actions. Not to mention, those last 20 years
aren't nearly as good from a health/pains perspective as the first or middle
20. "Probable" that I used isn't a good word, more like "inevitable."

When you get a certain age, you know you will be dead in the time it took you
to be born and graduate from college. Your window is rapidly closing. What are
you going to do with the last 20-40 years? You might not be able to do much
because you are stuck working, making someone else rich. You may very well be
bound to that job because of health care costs.

When you are young, you may realize this will eventually happen, but you won't
really understand it until you are in that situation. It's some heavy shit.
People thinking about this sort of thing is probably why humans invented
religion and spirituality.

------
Aaargh20318
I wonder how much of it is caused by having the freedom to decide how to spend
your own time.

I had the opportunity to spend a couple of months off between jobs a few years
back and I’ve never been happier. It was gone within a day of starting my new
job. I like what I do for a living, but not nearly as much as I like freedom.
Spending most of your life in dayprison sucks the joy out of your life.

~~~
ericmcer
I think 3 months is the expiration for unemployed meanderings to be fun. I
quit my last job to pursue a side project full time and it went from every day
being bliss to every day having a film of meaninglessness over it. Humans are
social creatures, and it is strange how important just having other people who
care about what you are doing is to making it seem important in your own mind.
I am debating finding a co-founder just so they can look at it sometimes and
be like 'yeah seems good' :/.

~~~
Aaargh20318
> I think 3 months is the expiration for unemployed meanderings to be fun.

I’ve spent longer periods of time doing fuck all earlier in life (college) and
it was awesome. I could just hang around the house for the rest of my life and
not get bored one bit.

> Humans are social creatures

While that may be true for the majority of people, it doesn’t apply to me.
Being around humans makes me miserable. I like the _idea_ of socializing, I
see people having fun at social activities and that makes me want to spend
time around people. But every time I do it’s just soooo boring. All I can
think of is how I’d rather be at home, alone.

~~~
0xBA5ED
I am pretty much like this. I still enjoy socializing with people, but I'm
happy as hell when I have loads of free time to work on what I want, when I
want, for as long as I want. I could live a thousand years without a schedule
and never get bored.

------
thaumaturgy
This article isn't really a good candidate for a list of "things you can learn
from older people".

First, the study it cites is at
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3332527/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3332527/).
The study has a few problems insofar as the way the article wants to use it.
The study covered several hundred individuals ranging in age from 18 to 94;
the median age of the participants was about 55, but the study doesn't specify
how many people were aged 80 or older; the study self-selected for people "who
reported that their health was 'as good or better than most people their
age'"; and, the trend analysis in the study displays a negative slope after
age 70 for "positive emotional experience".

So, as long as you limit your sample to people aged 50 to 70 who are in better
than average health, sure, maybe you can write an article that older people
are happier. Also, make sure you use pictures of people _much_ older than 70,
and talk about a handful of individuals you used as case studies.

Missing from the author's case studies is my grandfather, turning 90 soon, who
in his younger years was always very physically active and healthy, who was
well-read as an orphan and supported the civil rights movement long before
there was even a movement, who raised three daughters and lived long enough to
see two of them die and the third fall to a painkiller addiction, who was
married to and loved the same woman for almost 60 years before losing her,
too. He spends his days and his nights in a recliner. Most of his mind still
works but his body has mostly failed him. He can't go for a walk or enjoy the
sunshine. He relies on phone calls and visits from his grandkids to break up
the miserable monotony of his remaining days. He talks longingly and sincerely
of "the Oregon needle", and is disappointed every time he recovers from a bout
of pneumonia.

One of the things I've learned from him is that dying is okay. Just try to
live really well first.

~~~
loco5niner
Ok, I'm at a loss... "the Oregon needle"?

*edit - I'm guessing assisted suicide

~~~
thaumaturgy
Yep. Oregon refers to this as the "Death with Dignity Act".

------
agumonkey
Most old people I know are either semi depressed, or not very happy (say
slightly the middle point).

I also very very very often look a children. I know it's probably near
impossible to recapture a virgin mind and its fresh experience of everything.
But there's a musicality, in a physics lingo, a superb low impedance to their
behavior. They just flow. And it speaks to me. After long periods of getting
stuck in loops of browse/todolist/procrastinate. I find the idea of catching
my own desires, no matter what, and just get moving; often by starting the
motion, energy and happiness make a blip on the radar.

~~~
komali2
Sometimes this is captured in the "mindfulness" philosophy - opening your
eyes.

~~~
agumonkey
I didn't interpret that term this way. It feels more passive but wider
perception of the world and not necessarily to act on your own desire over
said world.

------
aacook
I've been reading Leland's book, Happiness is a Choice You Make, the past
couple weeks. I'm about half-way through it and totally recommend it.
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073P1HP8P/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073P1HP8P/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

I've been insanely fortunate to have things align for me such that I was able
to recruit my 93-year-old grandpa to be my unofficial happiness mentor about
18 months ago. What started as just errands morphed into going on adventures
and a constant stream of wisdom. I've been on what feels like an unusual
journey (not many of my friends hang out with a 90+ year-old every couple
weeks). Leland's book has been helpful in understanding how special it's been.
I wrote a longer piece about my journey with my grandpa this week.
[https://nanagram.co/blog/on-happiness-from-tirrell-
cook](https://nanagram.co/blog/on-happiness-from-tirrell-cook)

~~~
tjmc
Great post and pictures. Thank you!

------
somelostperson
I'm 52 and completely and utterly lost. None of my early goals (wife, kids,
close friends, personal company) have been reached. I have no hangout buddies,
no really close friends, no SO. Sometimes in the last 10 years my interests
dried up. Since my teens I wanted to have a company in a certain industry and
that industry changed and holds almost no interest now. I've no idea how to
get my groove back. I still mostly enjoy programming but I hate feeling like
life is happening while I stare at a screen even though I keep staring.

People tell me to get out and I do, tried surfing for example, didn't really
appeal to me. Tried dancing, same. Did lots of traveling but it's not so fun
alone for a 50 yr old guy.

I mostly feel now it's partly about luck as well. Meeting the right people,
having the right support groups is invaluable. Pretty much everyone I meet
that I might work with though is just looking for cheap labor as "I have this
idea, you're an engineer, how about you do all the work for free and I'll take
all the money if we make any" or at least that's how it feels.

As for as whether or not 52 is old sure it's not as old as 70 or 90 but ...
society in general labels me as old. Various forms require an age listed and
45+ or 50+ is the last group. HN tells me I'd have trouble being hired. Not
yet my experience but certainly on my mind. Going to almost any bar, club,
meetup, hackathon and I'm the oldest one there.

I don't feel I've lost my ambition. If I had then maybe I'd be content. Rather
I just lost direction and belonging.

~~~
Bakary
I'm too young to be giving you advice, but if according to what you have
written 1) you have few responsibilities to others 2) little satisfaction in
your current life (not much to lose) and 3) you're still healthy, then you are
logically in a position to take risks and maybe do something wholly out of
your comfort zone, or at least take the time to do some radical thinking about
your existence and what you really value.

~~~
rsa4046
Wholly agree with above sentiment and advice. I'm in my sixties, which amazes
me daily, as other than some recognition of slowing down physically I don't
have a clear sense of being young or old. I'm also about to start looking for
work again, about which I feel less dread than I anticipated, mostly due to
reasons others have given: less anxiety about the future as more water passes
under the bridge. But to the original point, as you said, one definitely
shouldn't be afraid of venturing outside one's comfort zone ... or if too
self-controlled, consider deliberately placing oneself in a situation you
can't strictly control. Otherwise one continues to plow the same rut until the
end, simply because it's the one you're in.

------
luckydude
My personal belief is hang with kids. I'm 56 and I dread the day that my kids
are out of the house (and it's coming).

My kid keep me young, keep me learning. I used to coach high school hockey,
that was a blast.

Want to be happy? Don't get old. Want to not get old? Hang with kids.

There was some interview with a tailor in HK I think, he was pushing 100 and
still working. He credited kids, he said they kept him young and interested.

~~~
mantas
We got a hiking club in local university. One of it's founders, a dude in his
80s (I think..) is still coming to easier hikes. Not only coming, he
frequently leads those hikes. People frequently ask him how long will he do
this. His response is "I don't know. What I know is, once I stop hanging out
with young people, I'll get old and die".

------
otakucode
>Older people report higher levels of contentment or well-being than teenagers
and young adults.

Does this confuse anyone? What old person is told by others when to awake,
what to wear, what to say, who to talk to, when to get through the metal
detector, how to act in front of the pervasive cameras in every hallway and
every room, watched over like a hawk for any infraction, kept away from
friends and where every joke is taken out of context in the most negative
interpretation possible and used to persecute and judge them, always with the
expectation that a criminal and malign intent is at heart?

Here's a little experiment. Take any article about adolescents, teenagers,
young adults, millenials, etc... and pretend they were saying those things
about a race. Or gender. Just replace the age category with one you're not
comfortable being bigoted over. See how the claims stack up and how familiar
they sound. The young are a persecuted minority group. Who would expect them
to be content?

Overall I like the article though it was a bit predictable. Taoism by a
different name, but yes, it works. In a storm, the stiff branch breaks while
the supple, flexible one survives. A stream flows around and through anything
placed in its path but can wear away mountains. Each day, you must find enough
food to eat and water to drink to stay alive. You need shelter from dangerous
weather (depending on your location). Everything else is gravy. Everything.

~~~
emodendroket
In many contexts it is not the young but the old who are discriminated
against.

~~~
Aloha
The old and the young have this in common.

When you're young, no one cares about what you think, or what you have to say,
when you're old, no one is paying attention anymore.

------
reasonattlm
Now think about how much better being old would be given the medical
technology to repair the causes of frailty, functional decline, and age
related disease.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
The medicalisation of my death is the thing I fear the most.

------
lutorm
The thinking expressed echoes many of the themes from my reading of Stoicism,
chiefly * learning to appreciate what you have rather than chase something you
don't have in the vain hope that it will give you satisfaction. * coming to
terms with the fact that there are things you have no control over and not
worry about them.

(If you are unfamiliar with Stoicism and would like to learn more, the blog
archive at [http://modernstoicism.com/](http://modernstoicism.com/) has a lot
of content. I also liked William Irvine's "A guide to the good life"
([https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-
Stoic/dp/0195...](https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-
Stoic/dp/0195374614)).

------
biohax2015
This is a beautiful article, and made me smile. I was greatly inspired by the
subjects’ attitudes. However it seems this tiny sample of people are happy in
spite of their old age, and not necessarily because of it.

What I got from the piece was: if you want to be happy, have a caring circle
of friends, family who visit you once a week, a supportive lover, and
impactful projects your are passionate about. These folks live quite excellent
lives (health issues notwithstanding) compared to anyone of any age. Age has
certainly given them more perspective, but I think it’s secondary here.

------
gradschool
Two of my favorite insights about aging come from the unlikely sources of Star
Trek episodes. In the series finally of Voyager, the older and younger Captain
Janeway meet face to face. After overcoming their initial distrust, they come
to realize that each has something to learn from the other, and when they team
up they're unbeatable even by the Borg queen. I can take something away from
that when writing about work I've done in the past, which is like
collaborating with my younger self. His job is to have the bold ideas, mine is
to correct the errors and omissions, and neither of us is much use without the
other. The other insight comes from an episode of TNG when a dying Captain
Picard is given the chance by Q to relive an incident from his youth that he
regrets. Fully expecting to put everything right because of his accumulated
wisdom and experience, he succeeds only in alienating his young friends and
setting the rest of his life on a course of mediocrity. Aside from the similar
theme of the older self underestimating the younger one, that story makes me
look at all the dumbass things I did when I was young in a different light. A
lot of them were due to having too big of an ego, but some measure of that
same personality characteristic was also an essential prerequisite to doing
anything worthwhile.

------
tonmoy
I personally think that happiness is overrated. To me it is just a way of
rewarding my brain for doing something good like achieving a goal. but I don’t
want that reward to become a goal itself

------
jotm
*Think like a happy person.

------
SlowBro
I recently turned 40 so I’m thinking about old people stuff. But I know it’s
not too late to reinvent yourself.

Despite years of chronic fatigue (hence my username) I decided to start a
manufacturing business and go after all those dreams I had as a kid but never
knew how to get to.

Reinvent yourself. It’s never too late. Some of your best years may lie ahead.

------
augustk
"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
-Isaac Asimov

------
zitterbewegung
Want to be happy ? Don’t listen to all of these self help charlatans .

~~~
komali2
Seems... Pretty dismissive.

How can a miserably depressed closed system find a solution without exploring
outside of themselves?

~~~
zitterbewegung
I am being dismissive but I'm mainly talking about the racket that creates
these self help headlines and news stories promoting a book and disappearing a
few months after once everyone really associates it with a result close to a
placebo.

Thinking outside of yourself and trying to be happy are things that you have
to realize for yourself and self help stories like these don't do much in the
grand scheme of things. I just practice mindful meditation or do something
relaxing. I think its sick making people believe in some kind of false hope
that you get from these self help phonies.

~~~
komali2
How did you learn about mindful meditation? I agree that there's a lot of
noise in the self-help space, but I've found at least 5 books that I consider
"must-reads" in terms of figuring life out. Maybe because I was raised by
parents that were relatively poor/uneducated/young, but sometimes the best way
to get this information is be taught it through a book.

~~~
zitterbewegung
A girl I had a crush on talked about it because she was a psych major. Also,
my iWatch does breathing exercises I use for meditation. I tried to use
headspace but it didn't work.

------
peterburkimsher
"Another five or six books were almost ready, and a couple of films still
needed finishing. After that, he said, “I’d like to travel.”"

I'm doing my travelling and going to concerts while I'm young.

The quote from Jonas made me think to look for books written by old people. Is
there a database where I can easily compare the publication date of a book and
the date of birth/death of the author?

Surely the data must be available, because the date of the author's death is
important for copyright issues.

~~~
CO-VAX
Try these: 1)
[http://gutenberg.net.au/birthdeath.html](http://gutenberg.net.au/birthdeath.html)
2)
[http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/deathdates.html](http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/deathdates.html)

------
known
"You are a product of your environment" \--Clement Stone

You'll be depressed/unhappy when your environment doesn't foster
creativity/self-actualization in
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)

------
ilaksh
Because they don't have to work.

------
alex_young
Selection bias?

------
HillaryBriss
So, to be happy, we should take a lot of vitamins?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16771044](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16771044)

------
jmspring
I watch my girlfriend's daughter (tween) as well as those in the local
community and wonder if there is still such a thing as "ambition". There is
obvious cognitive ability, but attention span and retention is quite lacking.
An old friend who has two young daughters and is on top of things, described a
lot of the young culture as having "a 4 second train of thought" because of
constantly on.

I personally don't see the younger generation, without some large impact, able
to step back from their need for immediate response, lack of attention to
detail, etc.

~~~
quickthrower2
I'm sure every generation has said this.

~~~
jmspring
Tell me what generation had high twitch games and 4" screens in their hands 24
hours a day?

~~~
quickthrower2
I don't know of such a generation.

