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Age Before Happiness
by Mad Dog
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The researchers found that, contrary to the conventional
wisdom, the tipping point, the wisdom of crowds, and other recently
named phenomena that make for snappy book titles, the happiest Americans
aren’t kids, they’re seniors. |
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We all need something to
look forward to, whether it’s a good night’s sleep, a much-needed
vacation, retirement, or a new president. But what about the big things
in life? How optimistic can we be when every day we wake up knowing the
best part of our life is behind us and we’ve been going downhill ever
since? Well there’s good news. It turns out that the best years of
your life — you know, the ones your parents always told you to make
the best of, you thought you did, but looking back on it you’re
certain you squandered — weren’t the best years of your life after
all. Your Golden Years will be. At least that’s what a study published
in the American Sociological Review (motto: “The path to
sociology is filled with sociopaths”) claims.
The researchers found that, contrary
to the conventional wisdom, the tipping point, the wisdom of crowds, and
other recently named phenomena that make for snappy book titles, the
happiest Americans aren’t kids, they’re seniors. That’s right,
AARP out-smiles kindergarten. Not only are older people happier, but
they give us a way to know just how much happier. According to the
study, the odds of a person being happy increase 5 percent with every 10
years of age, so even if you’re a cranky octogenarian you can look
forward to becoming happy. Well, as long as you live long enough. This
is good news for intense young singer-songwriters who think doom and
gloom are rights protected by the Constitution, tortured artists whose
trust funds aren’t as large as they’d like them to be, and the
Counting Crows, who if they can only hang in until they’re 240 years
old will be able to put out a happy CD. Or at least one that doesn’t
make you want to suck on an exhaust pipe when you listen to it.
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Things change when you’re older. Now when you come up with
the idea of throwing a paper airplane out of a spacecraft you wind up
with a big, fat, government grant. At least you do if you’re in
Japan.
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It makes sense. After all, what’s not to be happy about when
you’re older? Movies are cheaper, seats are reserved for you on the
bus as long as you don’t mind giving some young whippersnapper a
disapproving glare for three stops hoping they’ll feel guilty enough
to offer you the seat, and you don’t have to worry about acne, job
interviews, or whether you’re going to have sex tonight because, like
watching cartoons on Saturday morning, it just isn’t as important as
it once was. True, bread isn’t a nickel anymore and a tank of gas
costs nearly as much as your first house did, but those are small prices
to pay for not having to do homework, suck up to an incompetent boss, or
listen to your parents whine about how ungrateful you are.
Another bonus about being older is
that you get to do many of the same things you did when you were young
except you get paid to do it. Like fly paper airplanes. When you were
young you’d throw them in class and wind up in the principal’s
office sitting on a bench with kids who blew up a toilet with a cherry
bomb, made ricin in the chemistry lab, and were caught shaving in the
bathroom. For the third time in the third grade. It can definitely leave
a bad taste in one’s mouth about paper airplanes.
But things change when you’re
older. Now when you come up with the idea of throwing a paper airplane
out of a spacecraft you wind up with a big, fat, government grant. At
least you do if you’re in Japan. That’s right, scientists there —
grown-up ones, at that — teamed up with an origami master to create a
paper airplane that will glide to Earth without burning up. Not only
won’t they have to spend time in detention or get laughed at by the
other kids for doing this, they’ll be paid $300,000 a year for three
years so they can keep playing with the paper airplanes. Do you still
wonder whether older is better?
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And
where in high school we dreamed about growing up to be a morose,
depressed poet, as we got older we realized that being two out of three
is pretty good. I mean, really, who wants to be a poet anyway? |
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While these are good reasons why we’re happier when we’re
older, according to Duke University aging expert Linda George there’s
a better one — we’ve learned to lower our expectations. Where we
were once convinced we needed to win the Nobel Prize in literature, we
hit a point where we decided that working in an office and writing “I
hate my job” over and over is enough of a literary achievement,
especially once we figured out how to do it as a PowerPoint presentation
we could send to everyone in our address book. Where our goal was once
to be in the Olympics, later we’re happy if we can stay up late enough
to watch them. And where in high school we dreamed about growing up to
be a morose, depressed poet, as we got older we realized that being two
out of three is pretty good. I mean, really, who wants to be a poet
anyway?
Add to this the fact that as we get
older our short term memory isn’t as good. This means we remember the
old things much clearer. Suddenly we realize that the glory years
weren’t really that glorious and the best years of our life were only
best because at the time they were being stacked up against our younger
years, where bedwetting, needing help putting on our clothes, and having
to go to bed before it was dark in the summer were the norm. But now we
know we have something to look forward to. Happiness. Well, that and a
new president.
©2008 Mad Dog
Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country. The
best are yet to come.
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