tomorrow's Sunday
Quite pleasant when I slid open the door and stepped outside this morning. Time was just after four o'clock and the temperature on 7H porch was 76°, the slightest waft of a breeze, a loud splash in the Bay seven levels below me as a fish jumped, doubtless a large mullet.
Why do mullet jump? Maybe startled, maybe something's chasing, IDK maybe sheer instinct, maybe his lady mullet just smooched him on the cheek. Mullet run in schools, maybe he was just accepted into the school of his choice, IDK.
Neither do you.
Before Saturday morning warms up too much, I'm intending a walk in the park next door. Ride the elevator down, or maybe walk down, over to the gate that opens into Oaks by the Bay, and browse the food stalls at the farmers market. Mind, there are no farmers out there, "farmers" is just the name of it, when I was a boy the farmers came to Saturday market with their fresh produce, the closest you come to a farmer is your memory. The tomatoes are in large boxes that the stall-keeper buys from the grocery store or distribution warehouse.
The idea is not to get the perfect tomato or tasty crookneck squash, the idea is to get outside. Early this morning I read several articles about happiness, one said happiness is a stroll in the park, so fine, we'll see, the summer's been too hot to go out, but maybe for a few minutes this morning.
Another article finally admitted that money can buy happiness after all, which I could have told you.
Another, the article below (scroll down, it's just a couple of the introductory paragraphs) says happiness is a U curve, happy when young, plummeting until your midlife crisis, and from there it skyrockets. I second that, when I was a boy, happiness was a cute girl who liked you back*,
then the twenty-year plateau in the Navy, then the kick start midlife crisis of many adventures, and here I am in 7H still with the same cute girl seventy-one years later.
* PCNH, Tuesday, December 23, 1952, photo showing Linda, 16, and me, 17, dancing to the music of the George Gore combo at the Junior Yacht Club's Christmas Ball. Fall semester school year 1952-53, she was a junior at Bay High and I was a senior. We had just started dating.
RSF&PTL
T
Thank you for finding the picture, Robert!
C
The U-bend of life
Why, beyond middle age, people get happier as they get older
This article is part of our Summer reads series. Visit the full collection for book lists, guest essays and more seasonal distractions.
ASK people how they feel about getting older, and they will probably reply in the same vein as Maurice Chevalier: “Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative.” Stiffening joints, weakening muscles, fading eyesight and the clouding of memory, coupled with the modern world's careless contempt for the old, seem a fearful prospect—better than death, perhaps, but not much. Yet mankind is wrong to dread ageing. Life is not a long slow decline from sunlit uplands towards the valley of death. It is, rather, a U-bend.
When people start out on adult life, they are, on average, pretty cheerful. Things go downhill from youth to middle age until they reach a nadir commonly known as the mid-life crisis. So far, so familiar. The surprising part happens after that. Although as people move towards old age they lose things they treasure—vitality, mental sharpness and looks—they also gain what people spend their lives pursuing: happiness.