Happiness

I noticed an article on the net a few days ago which reported “new” research indicating that older people are happier than younger ones. For me, this goes in the category of obvious research. Who would think that older people would be less happy than younger ones? I suppose it is possible that younger people might think this because it would (a) cheer them up to think there is someone more unhappy then they are; and (b) because they assume that old is, well, old as in broken, of no further use, and if that’s who you are, then you are obviously unhappy.

Not so, in my experience. It seems to me that being old is, for the most part, an enormous improvement upon being young, upon being younger. Not without its downsides, of course: that death is the next likely big step in your life, so to speak, is one of the main ones. And there are the physical changes, of course, which vary from old person to old person and from time to time. But for the most part, I’d say, there is much less unhappiness and bedrock anxiety than at any other part of my life, other than my first few years, maybe. World War II provided me with enough anxiety to limit my happy childhood to the part that I don’t much remember.

The reason, I think, that old people are happier than younger people is that fewer people are messing with them. Once your children move on and you stop dealing with the world of employment and your difficult relatives have either given up on you or moved more permanently on, there are fewer people in your life who are interested in messing with you.

What I mean by messing with me (or you in the case that it’s you that’s being messed with), is that people don’t get in the way of my projects. Nowadays, I am pretty much left alone to figure out my projects and to do them the way I want to. Not so when I was working for the corporation or the institution, or when I had children always happy to interfere with my projects (and with every right to do so, to a considerable extent, I think, but irritating nonetheless), or when I had parents and other older relatives who felt pretty free to tell me every step of the day what I ought to be doing.

Not that I am entirely left to my own devices, even when old. Only a few weeks ago, I set out to buy a string trimmer as a joint project with a neighbor. I thought I might need it but had never used one; she had used one and wasn’t sure whether she had enough current use to justify the purchase. So, we agreed to purchase jointly a string trimmer and given that the sale price that week was all of $23, I didn’t think that either of us would have much to lose. But then things got more complicated and the neighbor’s husband got involved and eventually he bought a string trimmer for their use and assured me that I was free to use it any time I wanted. But then they’ve been away for 3 weeks so although I wanted to use it, I didn’t know either where it was or how to use it. So, I was messed with in my project.

The border, like my neighbor’s spouse, probably doesn’t think it’s messing with me. The agents of the U.S. government and Homeland Security probably never think about the fact that I had a project that involved my living in Point Roberts and, with proper documentation, pretty freely moving between Point Roberts and the ROTUS, as well as lower British Columbia. But I did, and they have definitely messed with that project.

A good friend has lost her Nexus card for unknown/undisclosed/undisclosable reasons and she now carefully calculates when the traffic flow is likely to be low so that she can cross the border in something less than a half-hour. She says she crosses less now and, as a result, spends less money, buys less stuff. Not so terrible, she says. But I think that is because she is younger and hasn’t yet realized that your life can be very happy, or at least it can be as long as no one is messing with you.