Getting Older, Getting Happier

People like to complain about getting old. I’m 25 and all my friends have been doing it for ages. It started to really stick out at 20, when all my friends complained that they were leaving teenage-hood behind but where still woefully unable to buy alcohol. At 22 crises began to emerge that there were “no good birthdays left” and suddenly people stopped talking so much about age. It wasn’t really in good taste to keep counting.
People like to blame all kinds of things on age; bad memory; achey limbs; wandering into a room only to find you have no no idea why you went in there. If there is one thing that stands out as a universal truth of pop culture, it’s that nobody wants to get older.

Still -- psychologists report that people actually get happier with age. For me, this has been incredibly true.

The older I get, the better my life seems to get. I find myself with new skills and talents, I never thought I would possess. Practice suddenly makes sense as I can finally see the rewards of so many repeated iterations of the same task. I have gained information. I have gained wisdom. I have gained friends and networks.

The older I get, the more knowledgeable I become. This is true in my areas of research, but also in other areas of life, where I have finally lived long enough to meaningfully comment. I am better at making friends. I am better at taking care of myself. I am better at negotiating relationships.

In undergrad, I spent some time playing Dungeons and Dragons. In D&D, and similar role-playing games, characters level. As they act, fight, cast spells, and complete tasks they gain new abilities and increase in power. Games like this have been designed to reflect our ability to grow and improve - simply by striving for our goals. I use the leveling metaphor everywhere in life. When things get challenging and you have to push hard to keep going, remember that you are leveling. When the encounter has ended, and you are catching your breath, remember to check your experience points. They have probably gone up. While aging can be challenging, we shouldn’t ignore the perks, and getting happier, more skilled and more powerful is definitely a perk.

Pursuing Happiness - Part 1 - My Anxious Origins- Emily as a Toddler

I’m pretty sure I was born anxious, but I don’t remember back that far. 

My mother gushes with enthusiasm when she describes me as a small child. I was her baby. I was quiet and tiny and always clinging to her. I was polite and knew how to introduce myself and shake hands. I was great at setting the table. The stories about me are told from a distinctly adult point of view. The details are on how my action made the adults feel, but I am wondering what it was that I felt. 

Hmmm... am I flipping off the camera in this picture?

I have bits and pieces of memory from the time. I remember being on an airplane and trying to distract myself from the pain in my ears by playing with My-Little-Ponies. I remember pushing a little girl off my small trampoline into a play kitchen set and then looking up at my mother wide-eyed and innocent as I explained that the other girl didn’t understand trampoline safety procedures. I remember feeling older than everybody my age (and many above my age). It felt like I knew what I was doing. I was aware... and that made me nervous about all the things that could go wrong. Being nervous made me shy, which made me quiet, which made me sneaky. The sneakiness made me a lier and the lying turned me into a performer. I have bits and pieces but getting into the head of myself as a child is not as easy as it seems. The threads of time and continuity are stretched thin. I can piece together memories and pull out character traits, but it’s more difficult to say what I was thinking or how I was feeling. 

What was going on in the mind of the spritely four year old child I see on the family video? 

She looks up at the camera suspiciously, seeming uninclined to perform. My mothers voice comes in loudly “Emily... say hello to your grandparents”. The little girl squints at the camera and raises her eyebrows. She is not impressed. She attempts to ignore the situation, wandering over to the couch and fiddling with some paper. 

“Emily... sing a song for us.” Emily sighs heavily before giving in, making clear her distaste for the request, but as she sings a glint comes into her eye. If she is going to perform, she will do it well. She seems pleased with her performance and more likely to cooperate. 

My mothers voice begins questioning again. “What do you think of George Bush?” The tiny girl rolls her eyes. The words come out in a frustrated burst. “I don’t think anything about George Bush!” She seems aggravated by the question. She does not seem to know why the question bothers her but she is certain it is a trick. 

My mother tries a different tactic. “Do you look like your mommy?” she asks. The response is quick, practiced and indignant “I don’t look like my mommy, she just looks like me!” There is laughing off camera. The little girl scrunches up her face with irritation. She does not like being bothered. She does like being tricked. And she is certain that all of this a set up. Yet again, the adults in her life are trying to farm cuteness out of her. She seems torn between performing and being spiteful. In the end she picks both. 

My ferocious grimace 

When my mother questions the young me about her friends, the child slyly informs her that she has none. Everybody yells at her. While the little girl eventually concedes that her long time best friend Kate is a friend, she says that she is the only one. Everybody else yells at her. I am intrigued watching this. I remember being “yelled” at. I was a sensitive child and referred to any chiding in that way. People were telling me what to do and I didn’t like it. What is clear to me as I watch the video is that this young version of me is trying to mess up the video. She knows at the least that her mother is trying to extract something adorable from her, and she is set on delivering something else. 

When my mother asks if the girl’s father is her friend, she complains that he too yells at her. Then, a look of mischief appears on her tiny face. She tilts her head and looks up at the camera as she concocts a story in which her dad (not the family dog) was actually the one who recently peed on the carpet. When my mother laughs and says “Noooo... that was the dog.” She smiles and shrugs. The mischief does not leave her face. 

It is a noteworthy fact that the tape was never sent out. 

...not happy

When I think back, I remember being a child who was always in her head. I was shy. I was nervous. I was afraid to talk and even more afraid to talk about myself. Still, even at that point, I had developed a mask for performance. I had learned that sometimes you needed to pretend in order to get by. Sometimes the adults wouldn’t stop pestering you until you had given them a show. When I think back to my childhood, I remember worrying about a lot of things. But to be honest, I didn’t have much to worry about. I had parents who loved and cared for me. I had food, shelter, friends and family. But, even then, I was anxious. What I would learn so many years later is the truth about why.