Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old by John Leland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
John Leland spent a year speaking with a group of six elders (85 years old and up) on a variety of topics during a crossroads in his life. He was trying to answer a major question he had: “Is there a threshold at which life is no longer worth living?” His marriage had fallen apart and at age 55 he was helping to care for his elderly mother, who had a strong wish to die.
Leland is a strong writer and divided the book up into different chapters, switching back and forth between tales of his interactions with these six elders, and concluding the novel with a chapter on the “Lessons” he learned from how these different folks dealt with the things that happened in their lives over that year. There was also a lovely bit at the end of the audiobook I listened to (during the afterword) that had a brief recording of each of their voices, telling readers their name and (briefly) what keeps them going in life.
We learned all kinds of details about the personal lives, health, living situation and support system of each of the people he spent the year with. Here are some of the major life lessons that were identified, with some overlap, that I took particular note of while listening:
1. Be Grateful. When you receive a gift from someone in any form, the gift is not important compared to how grateful and thankful you feel towards the person that gave it to you and what they mean to you. Practice being grateful/thankful in your everyday life for what you have.
2. Be flexible — learn to constantly adjust your expectations and goals as your situation changes. Identify wants versus needs and only focus on what is most important to you.
3. Those with a more positive view of old age and those who have a purpose/driving passion in life live longer than those who don’t.
4. Keep on singing and dancing, have a good drink and don’t get too serious.
5. Keep up with your purpose in life after you identify it.
6. Shut out all the less important noise and try to realize how amazing life really is.
7. Embrace the life you have now—there will always be impediments to our happiness, but don’t wait for external circumstances to change to be happy. Be fulfilled in the imperfect now.
For my personal life, I feel that the most important takeaway is this one: it is better when you disagree about something with your spouse/partner it is better to simply disagree rather than fight and try to make a big deal of it and try to change the other’s mind. Allow the other person’s beliefs to exist without needing to agree with them or fight about it.
Understanding the value of time, effort and money spent on others and becoming more generous with spending my physical and emotional capital (including time, effort and money) on the folks that I care about most. It’s about what you give freely to others, not what you get back.
I would recommend this audiobook to others interested in exploring the idea of happiness we can control and what happiness looks like for the 85-and-up crowd.
Maggie Cann Can Do It! 