hello hi how are you okay
Mark Twain said about old age it is sad
to go to pieces like this but tragically
we all have to do it Martin Amis said
meanwhile time goes about its immemorial
work of making everyone look and feel
like
everybody apparently wants to live a
long life but nobody wants to get old
some Italian even said old age is the
supreme evil because old age deprives us
of all our pleasures better than death
but not by much when I was young back
before the earth hardened and I was
going through those difficult adolescent
years people were always saying to me
enjoy yourself now marry my darling
because this is the best time of your
whole life and I used to think gentle
German Jesus if this is the best time of
my whole life I am just going to go and
hang myself somewhere but thanks be to
God they were wrong because this is the
and I don’t think it’s because I’ve
gotten so much better and I can only
hope I haven’t gotten so much worse but
I believe what I have managed to get is
a whole lot more like myself and that
for me has proven to be invaluable and
and it’s so relaxing too because of
course I spend most of my time with
myself and and now not with that exome
figment of my imagination that I dreamed
up trying to make myself into what I
thought other people might want me to be
in the end other people weren’t even
thinking about me that much at all which
I now find comforting but when I was
younger I thought it was tragic because
I was one of those sad people who was
constantly looking for the needle of
myself in the in the haystack of
somebody else’s eyes and and honest to
god that made me very unhappy but things
are very different now
now that the future doesn’t stretch out
in front of me in that terrifying and
ceaseless way I find no seriously I find
I am so much happier because instead of
looking forward to an endless series of
nerve-wracking possibilities I’m now
spending a lot of my time in the present
dealing with realities the realities of
work done of loved loved and of course
of suffering suffered it does seem to me
now that the secret of my life has been
for me to just hang on until I was
around long enough to get used to being
alive and then it all started to seem
really good to me now for a long time I
thought I was the only one who was
feeling that way and that all the
half-assed meditating I’d done all the
skimming through all those self health
books all the brené Brown tapes I’d
listened to Oliver Byron Katie questions
I’d answered all the Eckhart Tolle
podcasts I’d managed to get through
without falling into fits of
uncontrollable giggling I thought that
all that had added up to the older me
a happier and a more contented me but
guess what I discovered I’m not the only
one I’m not the only older happier one
out there science has now proven that
pretty well everyone in the developed
world gets happier as they get older
isn’t that amazing
in fact that it is isn’t it that that in
fact life is not what they used to say
it was a long slow decline into a sad
and gloomy old age leading inexorably to
the dark valley of death because when
you scientifically measure our life’s
happiness and plot it out on a graph
it actually shows a u-bend
towards happiness research shows that
North Americans do actually get happier
as they age and that is despite health
conditions and the other problems that
arise now I know let’s face it research
related to happiness is subjective
because after all happiness itself is
subjective but sociologists economists
and statisticians have taken that into
consideration and the sociologists have
alone have consistently conducted more
than 50,000 interviews since 1972
just for the general social survey
whatever that is but it’s big by asking
the right question are you happy year
after year over that long a period of
time and asking that question to people
as they age and new people all the time
the survey discovered that people get
happier as they get older and these
older happier people they weren’t happy
all their lives I mean they weren’t
necessarily gleefully jumping for joy
through their 20s and their 30s
and their 40s but suddenly at around age
50 they’re thinking they started to get
a whole lot happier as we get older
according to the research happiness come
to us even without us having to do very
much to find it oh sure we lose a lot of
things that we treasure as we age our
vitality our looks sometimes our mental
sharpness but they say it’s worth it
because we gain what people spend their
whole lives pursuing happiness and
despite what we’ve been told in the past
aging is not all about mourning for your
lost youth but truly aging is a new
stage of opportunity and strength you
know what they say the afternoon it
knows what the morning never even
suspected now in our youth obsessed
culture we’re constantly being told that
if we’re not young if we’re not hot if
we’re not glowing then we’re not worth
anything but that’s not true science has
now proven that old age does matter it
is the crown of our life the last act of
our own personal play they say in youth
we learn and in age we understand and
sure youth is a gift of nature but old
age is a work of ours now when we start
out in adult life we are on average
pretty cheerful this is the sad news but
things go downhill from youth to middle
age until they reach that stage commonly
known as the midlife crisis the u-bend
graph that we’re talking about shows
that we are at our unhappiest
in our late 30s and through our 40s the
global average is 46 that’s when most
people will experience the most misery
I’m sorry it’s not me I didn’t do the
research enjoyment and Happiness dip in
middle age but remember it is a u-bend
and as we age out of that dip we get
happier and just a side note to the
unhappy people in their 40s remember
it’s totally normal to feel the way you
do you you are just experiencing and
extended unpleasant but manageable
downturn and you’re not alone and it’s
going to get better because this awful
happiness drop will pass there’s nothing
wrong with you you’re in the midst of a
developmentally predictable stage a
stage of course that can be aggravated
by isolation and self-defeating
illusions but like adolescence it’s a
phase and it will inevitably lead to a
happier phase so if you’re not happy now
just live a few more years and you will
get happy
they guarantee it but in the meantime
remember don’t do anything stupid
Christ on a bike if only someone had
told me that because I just went out and
did every stupid thing I could think of
and if only I’d remembered that old
adage if I’d known I was going to live
this long I would have taken much better
care of myself
o of my feet of my lungs of my heart let
alone my liver but all of you all of you
guys in the dip get on it it’s never too
early to start taking care of those feet
oh now the world is getting older and by
2030 the world’s population over 60 will
double this aging in the Western world
is normally seen as a burden on the
economy and a problem to be solved but
the u-bend research argues that the
greater the world gets the brighter it
becomes Confucius said that old age is a
good and pleasant thing when of course
he said you are gently shouldered off
the stage but then you’re given such a
comfortable front stall as a spectator
of course when Confucius was around
people only lived until they’re about 32
so it was quite a short stop for them in
the spectator stall no time for their
arses to go completely numb from so much
boring relentless useless sitting and
spectating it’s different now though
we’re living longer and we’re going to
be living longer still
even the queen who is certainly no
slouch in the older happier Department
has had to hire on extra staff in order
to send out those telegrams that she
sends out to people who are celebrating
their hundredth birthday because the
number of people reaching the age of 100
has jumped by 70 percent in the last
decade and remember the happiness that
comes to us with aging doesn’t just make
us happier it makes us healthier too and
more productive
on average we Canadian women are living
to the grand old age of 83 and that’s 30
years more than our grandmothers lived
so here we are
with a gift of 30 extra years of
happiness healthiness and productivity
but with almost no maps or guidelines or
even stories that tell us what to do
with those happy relatively healthy
years and surely our crowd who spent our
youth burning our bras and promoting
free love and out to do nothing less
than absolutely and totally changing the
world we’re not going to settle for
withering away quietly in some southern
dated retirement community or god forbid
tied to a chair in in the hall at st.
Patrick’s home for the aged and infirm
or even what’s advertised now is our
best alternative tottering around in one
of those steeped and stooped and toxic
chemicals horrible golf courses as our
horizons grow shorter we need to invest
in what is most important to us and now
we’ve been given the gift of extra time
and the Earned wisdom to come together
and we can march out and actually change
the world and with with a tomb lurking
just around the corner so what are we
got to lose this very day is the youth
of our future we will never be as young
as we are right now as women we get more
radical as we age because we lose power
as we age men on the other hand get more
conservative because they gain power the
older they get yes for men it looks like
the older and the
older and the jollier and the dual
appier they get the richer and more
powerful they become for positive proof
just take a gander at those bags of old
and rent SATs in who make up the
present-day Republican Senate and the
gender pay gap widens to is women age
and there are only twenty female CEOs on
the list of the fortune 500
statisticians say that it will take 100
years for women to reach gender equality
in corporate America but you just look
at our prime minister he created gender
equality in the Canadian cabinet in one
day he just went ahead and did it and we
can do it too we’re the ones for the job
let all of us wrinkled radicals start
working together to finally bring about
gender equality to finally narrow that
damn gender pay gap to make the world a
safe place for half the world to walk in
yes let’s take back the night let’s take
back the morning and the midday the
afternoon in the evening and sit off on
our new journey to explore the outer
edges of human possibility old age is an
excellent time for outrage and let’s
face it there is plenty out there to be
outraged about my crowd are the boomers
3.0 and maybe this time we can finally
build that shining city on the hill and
construct our new Jerusalem of gender
racial and economic justice and equality
thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you very much thank you
Mark Twain said about old age it is sad
to go to pieces like this but tragically
we all have to do it Martin Amis said
meanwhile time goes about its immemorial
work of making everyone look and feel
like
everybody apparently wants to live a
long life but nobody wants to get old
some Italian even said old age is the
supreme evil because old age deprives us
of all our pleasures better than death
but not by much when I was young back
before the earth hardened and I was
going through those difficult adolescent
years people were always saying to me
enjoy yourself now marry my darling
because this is the best time of your
whole life and I used to think gentle
German Jesus if this is the best time of
my whole life I am just going to go and
hang myself somewhere but thanks be to
God they were wrong because this is the
and I don’t think it’s because I’ve
gotten so much better and I can only
hope I haven’t gotten so much worse but
I believe what I have managed to get is
a whole lot more like myself and that
for me has proven to be invaluable and
and it’s so relaxing too because of
course I spend most of my time with
myself and and now not with that exome
figment of my imagination that I dreamed
up trying to make myself into what I
thought other people might want me to be
in the end other people weren’t even
thinking about me that much at all which
I now find comforting but when I was
younger I thought it was tragic because
I was one of those sad people who was
constantly looking for the needle of
myself in the in the haystack of
somebody else’s eyes and and honest to
god that made me very unhappy but things
are very different now
now that the future doesn’t stretch out
in front of me in that terrifying and
ceaseless way I find no seriously I find
I am so much happier because instead of
looking forward to an endless series of
nerve-wracking possibilities I’m now
spending a lot of my time in the present
dealing with realities the realities of
work done of loved loved and of course
of suffering suffered it does seem to me
now that the secret of my life has been
for me to just hang on until I was
around long enough to get used to being
alive and then it all started to seem
really good to me now for a long time I
thought I was the only one who was
feeling that way and that all the
half-assed meditating I’d done all the
skimming through all those self health
books all the brené Brown tapes I’d
listened to Oliver Byron Katie questions
I’d answered all the Eckhart Tolle
podcasts I’d managed to get through
without falling into fits of
uncontrollable giggling I thought that
all that had added up to the older me
a happier and a more contented me but
guess what I discovered I’m not the only
one I’m not the only older happier one
out there science has now proven that
pretty well everyone in the developed
world gets happier as they get older
isn’t that amazing
in fact that it is isn’t it that that in
fact life is not what they used to say
it was a long slow decline into a sad
and gloomy old age leading inexorably to
the dark valley of death because when
you scientifically measure our life’s
happiness and plot it out on a graph
it actually shows a u-bend
towards happiness research shows that
North Americans do actually get happier
as they age and that is despite health
conditions and the other problems that
arise now I know let’s face it research
related to happiness is subjective
because after all happiness itself is
subjective but sociologists economists
and statisticians have taken that into
consideration and the sociologists have
alone have consistently conducted more
than 50,000 interviews since 1972
just for the general social survey
whatever that is but it’s big by asking
the right question are you happy year
after year over that long a period of
time and asking that question to people
as they age and new people all the time
the survey discovered that people get
happier as they get older and these
older happier people they weren’t happy
all their lives I mean they weren’t
necessarily gleefully jumping for joy
through their 20s and their 30s
and their 40s but suddenly at around age
50 they’re thinking they started to get
a whole lot happier as we get older
according to the research happiness come
to us even without us having to do very
much to find it oh sure we lose a lot of
things that we treasure as we age our
vitality our looks sometimes our mental
sharpness but they say it’s worth it
because we gain what people spend their
whole lives pursuing happiness and
despite what we’ve been told in the past
aging is not all about mourning for your
lost youth but truly aging is a new
stage of opportunity and strength you
know what they say the afternoon it
knows what the morning never even
suspected now in our youth obsessed
culture we’re constantly being told that
if we’re not young if we’re not hot if
we’re not glowing then we’re not worth
anything but that’s not true science has
now proven that old age does matter it
is the crown of our life the last act of
our own personal play they say in youth
we learn and in age we understand and
sure youth is a gift of nature but old
age is a work of ours now when we start
out in adult life we are on average
pretty cheerful this is the sad news but
things go downhill from youth to middle
age until they reach that stage commonly
known as the midlife crisis the u-bend
graph that we’re talking about shows
that we are at our unhappiest
in our late 30s and through our 40s the
global average is 46 that’s when most
people will experience the most misery
I’m sorry it’s not me I didn’t do the
research enjoyment and Happiness dip in
middle age but remember it is a u-bend
and as we age out of that dip we get
happier and just a side note to the
unhappy people in their 40s remember
it’s totally normal to feel the way you
do you you are just experiencing and
extended unpleasant but manageable
downturn and you’re not alone and it’s
going to get better because this awful
happiness drop will pass there’s nothing
wrong with you you’re in the midst of a
developmentally predictable stage a
stage of course that can be aggravated
by isolation and self-defeating
illusions but like adolescence it’s a
phase and it will inevitably lead to a
happier phase so if you’re not happy now
just live a few more years and you will
get happy
they guarantee it but in the meantime
remember don’t do anything stupid
Christ on a bike if only someone had
told me that because I just went out and
did every stupid thing I could think of
and if only I’d remembered that old
adage if I’d known I was going to live
this long I would have taken much better
care of myself
o of my feet of my lungs of my heart let
alone my liver but all of you all of you
guys in the dip get on it it’s never too
early to start taking care of those feet
oh now the world is getting older and by
2030 the world’s population over 60 will
double this aging in the Western world
is normally seen as a burden on the
economy and a problem to be solved but
the u-bend research argues that the
greater the world gets the brighter it
becomes Confucius said that old age is a
good and pleasant thing when of course
he said you are gently shouldered off
the stage but then you’re given such a
comfortable front stall as a spectator
of course when Confucius was around
people only lived until they’re about 32
so it was quite a short stop for them in
the spectator stall no time for their
arses to go completely numb from so much
boring relentless useless sitting and
spectating it’s different now though
we’re living longer and we’re going to
be living longer still
even the queen who is certainly no
slouch in the older happier Department
has had to hire on extra staff in order
to send out those telegrams that she
sends out to people who are celebrating
their hundredth birthday because the
number of people reaching the age of 100
has jumped by 70 percent in the last
decade and remember the happiness that
comes to us with aging doesn’t just make
us happier it makes us healthier too and
more productive
on average we Canadian women are living
to the grand old age of 83 and that’s 30
years more than our grandmothers lived
so here we are
with a gift of 30 extra years of
happiness healthiness and productivity
but with almost no maps or guidelines or
even stories that tell us what to do
with those happy relatively healthy
years and surely our crowd who spent our
youth burning our bras and promoting
free love and out to do nothing less
than absolutely and totally changing the
world we’re not going to settle for
withering away quietly in some southern
dated retirement community or god forbid
tied to a chair in in the hall at st.
Patrick’s home for the aged and infirm
or even what’s advertised now is our
best alternative tottering around in one
of those steeped and stooped and toxic
chemicals horrible golf courses as our
horizons grow shorter we need to invest
in what is most important to us and now
we’ve been given the gift of extra time
and the Earned wisdom to come together
and we can march out and actually change
the world and with with a tomb lurking
just around the corner so what are we
got to lose this very day is the youth
of our future we will never be as young
as we are right now as women we get more
radical as we age because we lose power
as we age men on the other hand get more
conservative because they gain power the
older they get yes for men it looks like
the older and the
older and the jollier and the dual
appier they get the richer and more
powerful they become for positive proof
just take a gander at those bags of old
and rent SATs in who make up the
present-day Republican Senate and the
gender pay gap widens to is women age
and there are only twenty female CEOs on
the list of the fortune 500
statisticians say that it will take 100
years for women to reach gender equality
in corporate America but you just look
at our prime minister he created gender
equality in the Canadian cabinet in one
day he just went ahead and did it and we
can do it too we’re the ones for the job
let all of us wrinkled radicals start
working together to finally bring about
gender equality to finally narrow that
damn gender pay gap to make the world a
safe place for half the world to walk in
yes let’s take back the night let’s take
back the morning and the midday the
afternoon in the evening and sit off on
our new journey to explore the outer
edges of human possibility old age is an
excellent time for outrage and let’s
face it there is plenty out there to be
outraged about my crowd are the boomers
3.0 and maybe this time we can finally
build that shining city on the hill and
construct our new Jerusalem of gender
racial and economic justice and equality
thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you very much thank you
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