Choosing Well-Being: Lessons from the Oldest Old

There are few topics that I resist more than the realities of aging. But, John Leland’s book Happiness is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old shows how mindful choices can improve our lives at any age.

Two Categories of Thought

A famous discourse from the mindfulness literature divides thoughts (our interpretation of the world) into two categories:

• Thoughts that lead to happiness for ourselves and others.

• Thoughts that lead to unhappiness for ourselves and others.

Both categories of thought naturally arise in the mind.  But recognizing how certain trains of thought roll empowers us to choose between riding the rails or switching tracks.

Control Versus Response

Leland writes:

If you believe you are in control of your life, steering it in a course of your choosing, then old age is an affront, because it is a destination you didn’t choose. But if you think of life instead as an improvisation in response to the stream of events coming  at you—that is, a response to the world as it is—then old age is more another chapter in a long-running story.

Pain Versus Suffering

A China-born eighty-nine-year-old woman shared her thoughts about complaining with Leland.

“People complain about their health, or they say, today I have to see the doctor… Who can help you? A little pain—just take it  and make yourself stronger. Take a deep breath. Try everything to heal yourself.”

There’s an analogy in the mindfulness literature that compares the experience of physical or emotional pain to getting shot  with a dart. Complaining to yourself or others about the first dart is like shooting ourselves with a second dart.

Leland writes: Karl Pillemer of Cornell makes the  distinction between “happy in spite of” and “happy if only,” the former being a benefit of old age, the latter a vexation of youth. “Happy in spite of” entails a choice to be happy; it acknowledges problems but doesn’t put them in the way of contentment. “Happy if only” pins  happiness on outside circumstances: if only I had more money, less pain, a nicer spouse or house, I’d be happy as a clam.

Gratitude Versus Dissatisfaction

Leland cites studies showing gratitude generates positive activity in the moral and social processing centers of the brain. It also lowers blood pressure, inflammation and the stress hormone  cortisol, while boosting immune function.

Choosing gratitude over dissatisfaction is a no-brainer.

Past, Present, or Future Tense

Leland concludes:

It takes seventy or eighty or ninety years to learn the value of another sunrise or a visit from a surly grandchild–to appreciate how amazing, really amazing, life is. They only seem paltry because we haven’t lived long enough to see their value, or survived enough losses to know how surmountable most losses are. Simple gifts can  be as rewarding as more elaborate ones.

Here Leland doesn’t highlight the real choice. Infants and  toddlers are every bit as captivated by these small pleasures as their grandparents.

In a study published in 2010, researchers Matt Killingsworth and Dan Gilbert concluded that about 47% of our waking hours are spent thinking about what isn’t going on.

“A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” Killingsworth and Gilbert write. “The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.”

Though memory and speculation have made humans what we are today, they don’t make us happy. Happy young people and old people alike follow the advice of the mindfulness literature and choose to be present.