Happiness is Overrated

I read a letter to an advice columnist from a guy named Jamie. He had decided he needed to jettison some friends from his life – friends who weren’t making him happy. It made me think, and of course thinking makes me write. 

Oh, Jamie, 32 years old and deciding that happiness is the most important thing and that you can afford to kiss friends goodbye who don’t make you happy? Phew. Just wait until you’re 62 or 72 or 82 and see how much that perspective has changed. If life, for you, is still about having your washing and ironing done and your bills paid, I’d be surprised. Your little run-in with some illness issues might have frightened you, and I get it – at your age, that is a shock. A little later, a blink of the eye really, no longer surprised by illness, your cabinet stocked with little amber medicine bottles, you might wish for more, not fewer friends. Let me explain.

At 78, I have widened, not narrowed, my circle of friends and am richer for it. I have friends much younger than I – maybe even twenty years younger. We talk about the kinds of things I don’t talk to my age-appropriate peers about. One of my younger friends is dating again after being a widow for quite a few years; it’s so much fun listening to her analysis of the dating game in her early fifties. Another recently had a hysterectomy and is concerned at how her sex life will be affected.  I enjoy honest conversations with both of these gals about something I have long since stopped worrying about.

I have book club friends and we rarely talk about the book; we talk about grandkids and retirement and ill loved ones and ongoing insecurities. We meet for lunch every couple of months.

I write, so I have a writer’s group. Four of us are old enough to remember JFK’s assassination. We love to read each other’s musings. Would I call these people friends? Of course, but they are in my widened circle.

I have online friends. Some are Facebook friends – people I knew once personally and have moved away from, or they me, so we manage to stay connected this way. But then there are some I met at an online writing symposium. We connected immediately and have stayed in touch sporadically for over a year. They, too, are writers, so they are articulate and expressive and you wouldn’t believe some of the things we are able to talk about, teach each other about, having never physically met.

The smaller circle contains my old, old friends – some since junior high school, some since college, and some since my days as a career woman. There are a few I have distanced myself from, granted, since our views on the weightier issues are in direct contrast, but if they were to call me with a sick husband I would be there. I don’t give up on friends; I don’t pitch them from my life if they don’t make me happy. Sometimes things that make me sad are at least as meaningful to me as the things that make me smile.

Some of my best friends are dead, see, and I feel their loss. I miss them and realize how fleeting life is. I stand in my kitchen and use something one of my now departed friends gave me or I remember buying it with her there, and it hurts, but I love it that I have that memory. My life is so much richer for having had those much-loved friends in it.

And the tighter circle yet? My family, of course: My husband and two kids and their spouses and the two babies. Yes, babies. At 75 my 38-yr.old daughter had her first – the love of my life, a grandson – and two years later she had another – my nine-month old granddaughter. They make me happy and sad, I worry about them and fret over them, and hurt when they hurt, but they are what give my life purpose, and that, my young friend matters so much more than happiness. I have a purpose. I’m Nana. It’s not my only purpose; I have a less-than-hardy husband who I take care of, and I edit technical texts for my son. And I write my novels and stories that no one has ever heard of. Purpose.

Not for all of us does life become about happiness and reducing stress. And everything will stop being fun eventually, trust me, but you won’t be able to just leave. And overthinking can’t really harm you; you never know, you might find enlightenment in one of those thinking cycles. And some day the only time you will have is spare time; busy-ness will be a thing of the past.

I’m doing end-of -life thinking right now – making arrangements, as they say. I’m de-cluttering and writing letters to loved ones letting them know what they meant to me. Is it fun? I suppose I would call it fulfilling; maybe that’s a mature form of fun. These times are meaningful and sometimes tearful. Some of my friends are going through awful stuff and they aren’t any fun to talk to, but those talks help me grow and help them feel heard. Growing and being of service beats happiness, hands down.

Every relationship I’ve ever had has taught me something – about myself, mostly. Even the negative ones—maybe especially the negative ones. I had one person in my life – a really close friend – who drained my energy. She could be cruel and narcissistic and self-righteous, and so I let her go. But my anger at her fueled me to write a novel – I ended up writing three of them, actually, probably just to show her. She called me one day and I didn’t answer. Two months later her son called me to tell me she had ended her life. I don’t blame myself; I know what her demons were, but I wish I had answered the phone. Was I so delicate, so fragile that I couldn’t take whatever hurtful thing I thought she was going say? Now I’ll never know and that haunts me. If you let go of friends because they are difficult and challenging, you might just not learn what they have to teach you.

My advice would be dive into the fray. Live fully and with passion and purpose. Don’t aim for a stress-free life, one that is mellow, one that honors only self-preservation. Take risks – in friendships and in life. Open yourself up to people. Widen your circle; don’t narrow it. Embrace prickly. Comfortable isn’t always the best way to be. Comfort breeds complacency. Sometimes discomfort is a great motivator. Don’t try to decide what kind of person you want to be – just be it. And drag some friends along to talk to as you go.