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Age Before Happiness
by Mad Dog


The researchers found that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the tipping point, the wisdom of crowds, and other recently named phenomena that make for snappy book titles, the happiest Americans aren’t kids, they’re seniors.
We all need something to look forward to, whether it’s a good night’s sleep, a much-needed vacation, retirement, or a new president. But what about the big things in life? How optimistic can we be when every day we wake up knowing the best part of our life is behind us and we’ve been going downhill ever since? Well there’s good news. It turns out that the best years of your life — you know, the ones your parents always told you to make the best of, you thought you did, but looking back on it you’re certain you squandered — weren’t the best years of your life after all. Your Golden Years will be. At least that’s what a study published in the American Sociological Review (motto: “The path to sociology is filled with sociopaths”) claims.

   The researchers found that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the tipping point, the wisdom of crowds, and other recently named phenomena that make for snappy book titles, the happiest Americans aren’t kids, they’re seniors. That’s right, AARP out-smiles kindergarten. Not only are older people happier, but they give us a way to know just how much happier. According to the study, the odds of a person being happy increase 5 percent with every 10 years of age, so even if you’re a cranky octogenarian you can look forward to becoming happy. Well, as long as you live long enough. This is good news for intense young singer-songwriters who think doom and gloom are rights protected by the Constitution, tortured artists whose trust funds aren’t as large as they’d like them to be, and the Counting Crows, who if they can only hang in until they’re 240 years old will be able to put out a happy CD. Or at least one that doesn’t make you want to suck on an exhaust pipe when you listen to it.


Things change when you’re older. Now when you come up with the idea of throwing a paper airplane out of a spacecraft you wind up with a big, fat, government grant. At least you do if you’re in Japan. 
   It makes sense. After all, what’s not to be happy about when you’re older? Movies are cheaper, seats are reserved for you on the bus as long as you don’t mind giving some young whippersnapper a disapproving glare for three stops hoping they’ll feel guilty enough to offer you the seat, and you don’t have to worry about acne, job interviews, or whether you’re going to have sex tonight because, like watching cartoons on Saturday morning, it just isn’t as important as it once was. True, bread isn’t a nickel anymore and a tank of gas costs nearly as much as your first house did, but those are small prices to pay for not having to do homework, suck up to an incompetent boss, or listen to your parents whine about how ungrateful you are.

   Another bonus about being older is that you get to do many of the same things you did when you were young except you get paid to do it. Like fly paper airplanes. When you were young you’d throw them in class and wind up in the principal’s office sitting on a bench with kids who blew up a toilet with a cherry bomb, made ricin in the chemistry lab, and were caught shaving in the bathroom. For the third time in the third grade. It can definitely leave a bad taste in one’s mouth about paper airplanes.

   But things change when you’re older. Now when you come up with the idea of throwing a paper airplane out of a spacecraft you wind up with a big, fat, government grant. At least you do if you’re in Japan. That’s right, scientists there — grown-up ones, at that — teamed up with an origami master to create a paper airplane that will glide to Earth without burning up. Not only won’t they have to spend time in detention or get laughed at by the other kids for doing this, they’ll be paid $300,000 a year for three years so they can keep playing with the paper airplanes. Do you still wonder whether older is better?


And where in high school we dreamed about growing up to be a morose, depressed poet, as we got older we realized that being two out of three is pretty good. I mean, really, who wants to be a poet anyway?
   While these are good reasons why we’re happier when we’re older, according to Duke University aging expert Linda George there’s a better one — we’ve learned to lower our expectations. Where we were once convinced we needed to win the Nobel Prize in literature, we hit a point where we decided that working in an office and writing “I hate my job” over and over is enough of a literary achievement, especially once we figured out how to do it as a PowerPoint presentation we could send to everyone in our address book. Where our goal was once to be in the Olympics, later we’re happy if we can stay up late enough to watch them. And where in high school we dreamed about growing up to be a morose, depressed poet, as we got older we realized that being two out of three is pretty good. I mean, really, who wants to be a poet anyway?

   Add to this the fact that as we get older our short term memory isn’t as good. This means we remember the old things much clearer. Suddenly we realize that the glory years weren’t really that glorious and the best years of our life were only best because at the time they were being stacked up against our younger years, where bedwetting, needing help putting on our clothes, and having to go to bed before it was dark in the summer were the norm. But now we know we have something to look forward to. Happiness. Well, that and a new president.

©2008 Mad Dog Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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