I had a really fine phone conversation in the past few days…I’ve been trying to connect with this person for several months, but as I’m in Crete and she’s in the US, sometimes my phone won’t cooperate. Thus it was great fun to talk for an hour, catch up, see where we are, and support each other.
Her husband died within the past year. He was an amazingly kind and gentle man who seemed to have no enemies, avoided conflict unless absolutely necessary, and in general, seemed to go through life as if every day was a gift. Even when he was ill for the last several years, his attitude remained positive, outgoing, interested in others, and generally a good person to have in one’s environment. We both mourn his passing. But, she’s doing a tremendous job of staying on the positive side of things…she seems to have both picked up some of his positivity by osmosis, but also has leaned over the years that old adage really works: “Don’t sweat the small stuff/it’s all small stuff.”
Anyway, during our chat, we got to giggling about the unexpected ‘gifts’ age bestows on us. She mentioned sneezing and coughing as triggers for incontinence…I laughed and suggested, “Don’t forget standing up quickly!” As we giggled about that and other bits of how our bodies are betraying us (“My new dog follows me instead of getting ahead, and it’s so good because I no longer worry about tripping.”) (Technology—I have a phone, I’ve worked with the nice young people at the company several times and I still can’t make the damned thing work.”) (I’m getting more and more able to say what I want to say without worrying whether it’s received well or not.) and other bits of poking fun at self.
As we were talking, something fairly profound came to me: A sense of humor is a thing you can choose to have and keep. We have less and less choices and controls as we age…we may lose our car and our license, our friends, our health, our vision, our hearing, our pension. We may have fewer and fewer friends alive, and we may or may not be able to find new friends easily. But one thing we can control, if we’ll apply ourselves, if that sense of humor.
As we laughed and giggled about the way age is making us feel smaller, stupider, and less competent in our shrinking universes, we both chose to laugh at the ways and times we have to simply grin and bear it. And it occurs to me, this is one of the true healing prospects we can always choose to see working for us instead of against us. To learn to laugh and enjoy life instead of allowing life to wear us down; that is a gift we must work to own.
A companion to this idea: Gratitude is the law of increase! That which we focus on expands, and if we focus on the wealth, the joy, the laughter, the gratitude, it really seems that more is added and we live a happier and fuller life. But if we focus on lack (Why does no one come to see me? How can I live on such a small income? Why does my body hurt so much?), we spend our time amplifying the problems instead of the solutions. Can we retrain ourselves to choose gratitude, laughter, happiness and joy instead of irritation, anger, sadness and plain old meanness? I believe we can; I’ve witnessed this friend seemingly transforming herself from a worrier into a peaceful and happy older adult. She’s become a model for who I want to become as I age.
I believe it was Earnest Holmes (who I’m remembering founded Science of Mind) who used to say “It’s simple, but it’s not easy.” There’s truth here. If you’ve trained yourself to be unhappy all the time, that’s a hard habit to break. But, what if? What if we could look at the glass as half full instead of half empty? What if we could choose to laugh at all the craziness in our lives instead of cursing it? What if we could remember to manufacture gratitude, even when we don’t feel like it?
Today I commit to remembering to laugh at that which irritates, to feel gratitude when I find myself being cross, and to see the world as a happy and welcoming place instead of whatever I may see too much of the time.