Dear LPG, 

Here is an interesting fact.  I came across it on the internet so it must be right? 

Research shows that the average British person is at their happiest when they are between the ages of 65 and 79.   This left my 77-year-old self-wondering what happens in two years’ time.  I have to agree that most of my friends of a similar age appear pretty happy but we all know that what is going on on the outside often misrepresents the stuff that we hide when we are with our friends.   

Just reading that statistic got me feeling the need to dig deeper into just how happy we so-called ‘Baby Boomers’ really are.  The only measuring stick I really have is myself and the people that I know, and we all seem fairly happy for now although I wonder if that is because we all put up a front when we are together.  It is also a fact that we spend a lot more time on the phone, where, without those giveaway facial reflections of emotion, it is even harder to gauge what is really going on beneath the surface of the emotional life of the person you are talking to.  While in these days were we use the written word as a substitute for keeping up with our friends, by way of texts and emails, it is even harder to read the signs of distress.  

There are many kinds of happiness and perhaps being content with your life is the most important aspect of being truly happy, as long as contentment is not a substitute for being resigned to it. There has to be a balance between the two, and perhaps that is what is missing.     

No matter what age we are, we humans have a knack for hiding the obvious from the people around us if we really feel the need to and it could well be that we are hiding it from ourselves at times.   

The simple answer is to have at least one person that you can be absolutely candid with because the ‘two heads are better than one’ aspect of getting through the hard times has to be one of the best strategies to adopt, no matter how good times are right now.  

My thought took me back to the internet, where I found a little information about how to tell if life is getting on top of you or one of your friends and there is no end of data there when it comes to seeing the signs of a friend’s distress.  I found a couple of videos which might help get readers thinking and I hope that LPG will be able to add links to them below my message.   

To sum it all up, I believe that we all need to make sure that we are at least laughing with the world and at times even laughing at the world while we make sure that it is not laughing at us.  

GS, Orpington 

 

GS offers us a bit of information about how to check if you friends are really happy… 

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