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Older, Wiser, Happier
by John de Graaf
Liv Fun: Vol 3 – Issue 1
I have spent the last four years immersing myself in the subject of happiness. What makes us happy? Who is happy? What matters more, attitudes or life conditions? Can national policies make us happier? For some, happiness, they declare, is a personal matter, unmeasurable, and too frivolous for the affairs of state. But our country was founded on the idea that happiness matters.
For Thomas Jefferson, setting the stage where the citizens of this country could find and secure their own happiness — the sense not of momentary pleasure, but of a satisfied and virtuous life — was not only a personal goal, but also “the only orthodox purpose of the institution of government.” Yet, in his day, it wasn’t feasible to measure happiness; it was all guesswork. Not so today, when the study of happiness has become a science and we are better able than ever before to understand who is happy, and why.
Seniors and the Happiness Gap
My colleagues from the Happiness Initiative (www.happycounts.org) have amassed a great deal of data about American happiness based on nearly 30,000 full responses to a lengthy scientific survey. Metrics like income satisfaction, financial security, physical health, access to educational and cultural opportunities, and healthy environmental factors have all been cited as predictive measures of happiness and general well-being. In fact, similar metrics are used by UNICEF and the United Nations in their global studies of happiness. (See endnotes for information on these studies.)
Till recently, happiness scores have tended to form what looked like a smiley-face curve, highest in youth and old age, lowest in middle age, when life’s pressures and demands often overwhelm people. But the Happiness Initiative is finding something different: Right now, the unhappiest Americans are those aged 25–29.
Liv Fun
by Leisure Care
Spring 2014
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Older, Wiser, Happier
by John de GraafI have spent the last four years immersing myself in the subject of happiness. What makes us happy? Who is happy? What matters more, attitudes or life conditions? Can national policies make us happier?
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Finding Meaning at the Boundaries of Life
by Sandy Sabersky
We like to think that we are free. Free from boundaries and limitations. Yet, though we talk about freedom, ultimately we are bound — by our bodies, health, minds, and age, and by what forms the border of our life — death.
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Walking in Santa Fe
by Elana Zaiman
I walk every day. I swim a couple times a week. I shoot hoops with my 13-year-old son. I bound up and down the stairs. At least, I used to. The pain began innocently enough, with a swollen finger, then a pinch in my left hip that feels, every now and then when I put my left foot forward, as if my skin is seeping under my pelvic bone and getting stuck on the bottom of it on the way out.