I have just read an article in our local newspaper, The Times Colonist. It's copied from an article written by Katy Read, Star Tribune, Minneapolis, and the title is: "Happy Seniors Overrepresented."
How to define happiness is the first problem especially in an aging population, approaching eighties and beyond.? What is happiness and how do you know when you are happy? Good question that I can only answer from my Canadian experience.
Our health care system may not be perfect but I have no fear of the future should my health fail and I require surgery, hospitalization or treatment for cancer. None of those will be fun but the costs are covered by the health care system into which my taxes have been paid, and continue to be paid. My bank account remains intact.
Back to happiness. As an older person I'm thinking happiness is a chimera that can be broken down into bits and pieces. Listening to a bird song or the screeching of gulls. I know I'm alive when those things make me smile. Is smiling a sign of happiness?
Out walking by the sea this morning I saw some diving ducks. A log flowing in with gulls perched on it.The Pilot boat going out to take the pilot off an ocean going freighter. I met a friend and had a short chat. And the lowering clouds reminded me that autumn is here. Altogether a pleasant outing while breathing ocean-fresh air. I was happy to be alive and fit and well enough to walk a kilometre.
Back to something else I am doing to please me. I am memorizing a few wonderful lines from Macbeth having just seen the opera. Love it but I want to hear the words. I'm also giving myself pleasure in memorizing A. A. Milne's clever children's poem, King John's Christmas. It is witty. The poem starts like this.
"King John was not a good man, He had his little ways, And sometimes no one spoke to him for days and days and days.And men who came across him, When walking in the town, Gave him asuperciliousstare,Or passed with noses in the air. And poor King John stood dumbly there, Blushing beneath his crown."
The decorations by the brilliant Ernest H. Shepard are priceless. The poems are made to be read aloud and I can't bore my friends by reciting them while trapped at the dinner table with me. They would not be happy, would they? The poem is in Now We Are Six. My husband bought a complete set of A.A. Milne's Christopher Robin's stories and poems for my daughter, Lesley, when she was born in 1946. I still have the books.
What is happiness?
Anita
www.anitabirt.com
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