Month: June 2015

Our 50^th high school reunion was a source of happiness and discovery for Judy and me. High school sweethearts, we spent much time with each other, not cultivating a particularly broad array of friendships among classmates. The reunion happily connected us with people with whom the teenage connections had been, at best, tenuous. And we all seemed to feel that happiness. Why?

Science and social science might be developing answers. Did you know about the field of “happiness economics?” Have you ever heard of the U-curve? Those were news to me.

Writer Jonathan Rauch introduced me to the U-curve in an article in The Atlantic. It seems that human beings, across ethnic, cultural, even economic backgrounds (and some great apes, too!) have sketched a common pattern of behavior with respect to life satisfaction that seems beyond coincidence. Put simply, folks in their 20s and 30s tend to be high on life. Beginning in their 40s and extending, perhaps, as far as the early 50s, “is that all there is,” (to quote a favorite line from a favorite song) creeps into the psyche.

Then, without any particular causation, life begins again to be satisfying. One psychologist, Laura Carstensen, quoted by Rauch in his article, “found that ‘the peak of emotional life may not occur until well into the seventh decade.’” That about hit the Class of 1964, San Diego High School, head on in October 2014. All those peaking emotional lives gathered in one place at one time. The room must have oozed life satisfaction.

We were all in the upswing of the U-curve.

Rauch describes interesting research into why the curve exists. There are explanations involving the “expectations gap,” (you knew a gap had to be involved somehow!) which relates the realization of a shorter time left in life to more realistic goals. The growth and some practical definition of wisdom is also an up and coming area of study. Rauch likes the line of thinking that emphasizes the increased realization that relationships matter more than things.

I do, too. And there is a satisfying pun from the world of texting to note here as well about the U-curve. As I get older, U matter more to me. I also like the U-curve more than the Bell Curve because there don’t seem to be any people less able to enjoy benefits.

Nothing about the U-curve or happiness economics gets in the way of People of a Certain Age still striving to invent, create, make a difference. As Rauch points out, evolutionarily speaking, having us older folks around has proved useful to younger people who tend to be quick to act, less able to control their emotions, full of energy and the ones who, at their best, drive change and progress. We provide the ballast of experience, the time to reflect, that steady the ships sailed by our juniors.

I do not feel the need to “make my mark” in the same way I did when I was younger, and I am not alone. If I make more “marks” before I leave this earth, bully for me. What matters more is the experience of life at a pace that permits savoring moments, especially those spent with others.

Perhaps there is something else at work here, too. Barry Manilow sang the lyric “I made it through the rain.” The song celebrates others who made it through the rain, too, suggesting a basic camaraderie among those who have spent a similar amount of time on the planet and are still standing, figuratively, if not literally.

At some level, didn’t we all grow up respecting our elders, valuing our grandparents, celebrating our kupuna by whatever name we called them? Why did we do that?

Maybe we who have reached the age of elder or grandparent or kupuna feel humble pride that we have gotten this far. Our roads to this place and time are many and variously dotted with triumphs and disasters. But we have made it. We’re proud we have done. We’re humble because to have gotten here was neither a foregone conclusion nor a feat we accomplished alone.

There are still people in the curve of the U. If the research is right, there will always be those.

For those of us on the right hand side of the U, now that science and economics are confirming that our upsurge in life satisfaction is normal, let’s enjoy the happiness we feel. It’s in our nature.

June 23, 2015

The speaker was only 15 years older than the graduates she addressed, so they listened attentively. In a quiet yet forceful voice, she described being scared to knock on the door of the first house she would visit as a 20 year-old candidate for state office. What was she thinking? She is now a Congresswoman, a war veteran, poised, proud and humble, a rising star nationally in her party. She was once scared?

The kids and the rest of us were hooked by her story.

Days later, another graduation speaker. She told us she was not going to make a speech but would just speak to us. She unveiled her story: abused as a child, she found safe haven and confidence at the school whose graduates she now addressed. Incredibly, sexual violence visited her again in college. She was devastated. She is now an accomplished, articulate, effective veteran national leader in the movements to end domestic violence and other forms of abuse.

More drama in this story. Odds that seem daunting yet morphing into a story of triumph. Her “just speaking” was a powerful speech.

A professor of Mom’s once assured her class that every person’s life provided a story worth knowing. All that was needed was the telling or the writing. No need to be a member of Congress or national CEO to have a story worth knowing. Every person, he said.

I don’t know every person. But every person I’ve ever taken the time to query and listen to has, in fact, had a story containing something worth knowing, even if the story described the everyday, the routine, the quotidian (can’t resist that word!).

At one of Dad’s churches, there was a man named Tom Hatfield. On Sunday, Tom was one of the crowd, a 70+ year-old guy in a rumpled tan suit who didn’t socialize much on account of his being shy. Every Saturday, Tom Hatfield mowed the lawn around the church. So, every Sunday, the church looked cared for.

I never knew what Tom had done for a living or what family he might have had. I was just a teenager. But I learned from Tom Hatfield the value of “the little unremembered acts of kindness and of love” Wordsworth described, and Dad preached about to a congregation that might not have thought much about how the grass got mowed every week. Tom had a story; he was the story.

The best history teachers tell stories. No surprise there. Not every story makes the history books. But every story can still teach, and engage in a way dates and date do not.

Once, sitting on a bench at a retirement community waiting for a friend, I engaged a resident who informed me that he was the creator of the Pink Panther. I pumped him for more information, and he educated me about life in Hollywood. Maybe he was the creator and I had lucked out in engaging him in conversation. Or maybe he was not, and he was choosing to live a fantasy into which he had invited me for a moment. Either way, I learned something.

Have you had a crossroads moment where you made a choice that has shaped your life since? What drama has there been in your love life, your professional career, your child-rearing, your military service, and so on? What lessons lie in your story?

Our stories—yours and mine—are unique but connect to the larger human experience. That wonderful paradox: we are individuals part of a whole with a past, present and future. Through our stories, we contribute some bit of understanding to the education of the young and those not so young whose education never ends. If we tell them.

When Tom Hatfield died, the church lawn did not get mowed as much.

The CEO found her way back from anger, guilt and despair by volunteering to help others at a critical time in the life of her city.

The Congresswoman remembered a challenge from her parents: if you see something amiss, what are YOU going to do about it. She rang the doorbell, convinced that her desire to engage in public service was not about her but about the service she wanted to provide to others.

What is your story? To whom have you told it? If not yet, when?