Everyone knows that regular exercise can help keep the body in good shape. But many assume that there’s nothing they can do about becoming forgetful in their old age.
Now, evidence suggests that older people can preserve their mental acuity by exercising their brains.
It seems like the evidence is continually growing. Use it or lose it.
Art of Qi by Dr Amir Farid Isahak
RECENTLY I was invited by an insurance company to give a talk on “Recharging Your Sex Life” to their top agents at their annual convention. The event was held at the Tanjung Ara Beach Resort in Kota Kinabalu. Since it was during the school holidays, I took my family along for a holiday too. It was an enjoyable break for everyone.
The resort had a fantastic programme for my two younger children, as they spent one whole day learning drama, and painting themselves for a full make-up and costume play which they presented to the families on the same night.
And me? I just love to talk about sex. So it was an enjoyable holiday where I got to talk for hours about sex, and got paid for it! Let me share some of the stuff that I taught those hard-working insurance agents.
You must think of sex all the time
First, if you are a man, and you are not thinking about sex all the time, it means that you do not have enough testosterone, the male sex hormone. It does not mean that you must be having sex all the time, but if you’re not thinking about it often, you are also less likely to want it. And if you do not have early morning erections anymore (young men always have such erections even when they are not thinking of sex), it means your testosterone levels are very low.
Men suffer sexual problems much earlier than women, because the decline of testosterone starts in their 20s, such that by age 40, about a third of men have a significant decline in the hormone, and by age 50, more than half are testosterone-deficient. Andropause (or male menopause) generally occurs at about age 50 (same as menopause in women), and is associated with erectile dysfunction (inability to achieve satisfactory penile erection), memory loss, emotional and relationship problems, and even osteoporosis.
Tests on about 50 of our local doctors (age 40-60) attending a sexual health seminar three years ago showed that two-thirds were testosterone-deficient, and one-third had excess oestrogen (female sex hormone).
In the past, it was thought that andropause was a myth, as tests on testosterone showed no significant decline with age. Now we know that it is the free testosterone (the unbound, active portion) that declines. So if you ask your doctor for the test, make sure it is for free-testosterone.
Women also depend on testosterone for their libido (apart from its effect in strengthening bones and firming muscles, etc). So when a woman lacks sexual desire, taking low-dose testosterone can do wonders. Testosterone works best when there is sufficient oestrogen, so in menopausal women, we need to correct the oestrogen first, and then give testosterone. There are also HRT (female hormone replacement therapy) formulations that have inherent libido-enhancing effects. If a woman is also thinking of sex all the time, she must be having sufficient testosterone. However, it is possible to have excess testosterone. I had a patient with long-standing testosterone excess, and she had clitoral enlargement due to the excess hormone.
Understanding hormones makes it possible to reject the old notion that you are expected to “slow down” in the sex arena as you age. If you are slowing down, it just means you are not healthy.
Apart from having sufficient sex hormones, for good sexual health, we also need sufficient growth hormone (HGH) and several pro-hormones (hormone precursors). We also need sufficient supply of nitric oxide, the miracle messenger molecule that causes our blood vessels to dilate (very important for penile erections, and for healthy hearts). We have to develop sufficient body strength and stamina. Most of the men who do not take care of their health will realise that by age 40, even if they are able to have erections, they cannot perform well anymore, and leave their wives or partners frustrated. If they are diabetic, it is worse.
Sex and qi
For good sex, we also need plenty of qi (life-force) because sexual energy is qi. Those who practice yoga, taichi or qigong will find that their sexual stamina will remain into their ripe old age. Qigong practitioners should expect to have early morning erections right past their 50s. There are special exercises for sexual health, and those who are consistent with the practice can expect to have a healthy sexual life, just like the good old days when they first got married.
I must stress that it takes regular, consistent practice to start feeling the benefits of qigong. When it comes to the Secret Treasures of Qigong, which includes most of the exercises for sexual prowess, it is more so. Those who learn the techniques but do not practise as regularly as they should will be disappointed. But if they do it often, they will make themselves and their partners smile for life!
For more on how to improve your sexual energy through qigong, please refer to The Secrets of Qigong (http://www.superqigong.com/). ). Malaysians ‘tak boleh’ when it comes to sex ). The last global sex survey (2005) carried out in 41 countries showed that Malaysians ranked an embarrassing 36th position in terms of frequency of sex. The most sexually active were the Greeks, who dethroned the French, at 138 times (a year). The Americans were at 11th with 113. Nine of the bottom 10 were Asians. Even the Thais logged in at 31st, with only 97. Malaysians had sex only 83 times per year, way below the world average of 103, but we were ahead of Singaporeans (73) and far ahead of the Japanese (only 45). ). The last global sex survey (2005) carried out in 41 countries showed that Malaysians ranked an embarrassing 36th position in terms of frequency of sex. The most sexually active were the Greeks, who dethroned the French, at 138 times (a year). The Americans were at 11th with 113. Nine of the bottom 10 were Asians. Even the Thais logged in at 31st, with only 97. Malaysians had sex only 83 times per year, way below the world average of 103, but we were ahead of Singaporeans (73) and far ahead of the Japanese (only 45). A survey in 2000 revealed that about 45% of Malaysians aged 40 and above had erectile dysfunction. Sometime later, the then Health Minister revealed that Malaysians were the highest per capita consumer of Viagra in the world! Which goes to show that when it comes to performing in the bedroom, Malaysian men “tak boleh” and many have to depend on Viagra or similar drugs. Because diabetes is also becoming a national problem, the trend will get worse. ). The last global sex survey (2005) carried out in 41 countries showed that Malaysians ranked an embarrassing 36th position in terms of frequency of sex. The most sexually active were the Greeks, who dethroned the French, at 138 times (a year). The Americans were at 11th with 113. Nine of the bottom 10 were Asians. Even the Thais logged in at 31st, with only 97. Malaysians had sex only 83 times per year, way below the world average of 103, but we were ahead of Singaporeans (73) and far ahead of the Japanese (only 45). A survey in 2000 revealed that about 45% of Malaysians aged 40 and above had erectile dysfunction. Sometime later, the then Health Minister revealed that Malaysians were the highest per capita consumer of Viagra in the world! Which goes to show that when it comes to performing in the bedroom, Malaysian men “tak boleh” and many have to depend on Viagra or similar drugs. Because diabetes is also becoming a national problem, the trend will get worse. Now you will understand the Malaysian men’s reason for always shouting “Malaysia Boleh” wherever they go. This is a positive psychological affirmation against their “tak boleh” problem in bed.
). The last global sex survey (2005) carried out in 41 countries showed that Malaysians ranked an embarrassing 36th position in terms of frequency of sex. The most sexually active were the Greeks, who dethroned the French, at 138 times (a year). The Americans were at 11th with 113. Nine of the bottom 10 were Asians. Even the Thais logged in at 31st, with only 97. Malaysians had sex only 83 times per year, way below the world average of 103, but we were ahead of Singaporeans (73) and far ahead of the Japanese (only 45). A survey in 2000 revealed that about 45% of Malaysians aged 40 and above had erectile dysfunction. Sometime later, the then Health Minister revealed that Malaysians were the highest per capita consumer of Viagra in the world! Which goes to show that when it comes to performing in the bedroom, Malaysian men “tak boleh” and many have to depend on Viagra or similar drugs. Because diabetes is also becoming a national problem, the trend will get worse. Now you will understand the Malaysian men’s reason for always shouting “Malaysia Boleh” wherever they go. This is a positive psychological affirmation against their “tak boleh” problem in bed. The survey showed that men had more sex than women (104 versus 101), although in the previous year, the women outdid the men. The most sexually active were those between 35 and 44. However, for those who do not take care of their health, there will be a drastic decline after 45. Twenty percent had sex three to four times a week (which also qualifies as aerobics exercise), while 5% had sex everyday (which qualifies for a gold medal from me).
What about the Japanese?
The Japanese have consistently maintained the bottom position, having sex a paltry 45 times a year, about 1/3 that of the Greeks. Through a Japanese friend, I began to understand the Japanese culture and am now not surprised at the statistics.
For many Japanese, they are sexually active as youngsters and have premarital sex. After marriage, the good sex life continues, but things abruptly change after the birth of the first child. It is not uncommon for the couple to continue living together in a sexless marriage, or if at all, only occasionally have sex, especially if they want more children. They may even sleep in separate rooms. The husband often satisfies his sexual needs outside the home, and all this with implicit consent of the wife.
But if we look into their history, they seemed to have enjoyed sex much more. There are famous Japanese paintings of courtesans copulating, and the warlords were famous for their sexual conquests as much as their military ones. All the disciplines and martial arts exercises mastered by the samurai and ninjas would have made them saturated with qi, and hence made them also sexually active. With their fitness and acrobatic abilities, we may wonder what exciting sex they must have had!
I was shocked to hear about the modern-day Japanese culture, and I hope this will not become the norm for us too. There are many unhealthy trends creeping into our lifestyle, some of which are damaging to our health, and to our families.
The Hong Kong people, for example, have consistently said that they are too busy making money to have sex. They are also always near the bottom of the sex survey list.
Now that the cost of living is getting higher each day, with petrol prices jumping to scary levels, many Malaysians have resorted to working longer hours to make ends meet. In many families, both the husband and the wife work, leaving the children unattended, or under the care of maids. The breakdown in family values is noticeable, as youngsters are heavily influenced by cultures promoted by the western media (especially TV programmes) and the parents not instilling our own values enough.
Parents should spend more time at home, not only for the children, but also for their own sake. They should also enjoy sex more so that we Malaysians can beat the Greeks and one day stand up tall and shout “Malaysia Boleh!”. But I guess that will have to wait until the World Cup is over.
It is impossible to drive the ribbon of highway from Espanola to Abiquiu and not see O’Keeffe in the red-rock cliffs, their creased slopes meeting the valley floor like the toes of a giant, ancient animal. Aficionados cannot lay eyes on the flat-topped silhouette of Pedernal , her favorite mountain, without flashing on her words: “God told me if I painted it often enough I could have it.”
O’Keeffe’s spirit still daubs pale wisps in the desert sky and bends diagonal shadows up the walls of her adobe house. And what, if not a spirit, permeates these rooms with the peace of an orderly, directed life? “When I got to New Mexico, that was mine. As soon as I saw it, that was my country,” she said. She called this landscape “the faraway.”
Since her death in 1986, thousands of pilgrims, both artists and appreciators, have sought O’Keeffe’s essence in the sere landscape of Abiquiu — her subject, muse, and home — 25 miles northwest of Santa Fe. Visitors want to see what she saw, touch what she touched, bask for a few hours in the clarity she crafted from form and space and light.
We struck out from the capital city to join the pilgrimage. After coffee in Santa Fe’s bustling plaza, where jewelry vendors and burrito sellers were setting up their booths for a fiesta, we were glad to see the city vanishing in the rear-view mirror.
Heading west toward Espanola, we crossed the Rio Grande and watched the scenery grow hillier, with outcrops of rock and cone-shaped mountains edging closer to the road. Geology revealed itself in striking layers. Cliffs striped in terra cotta, buff, and gray were capped with marine sediment from a sea that covered the area in the middle Jurassic period. Mesas rose against the sky like distant altars.
These were among the sights that thrilled O’Keeffe when she first traveled to the region in 1917 on a trip with her sister. (O’Keeffe was born in Sun Prairie, Wis., in 1887, moved to Virginia in 1903, to Chicago to study art in 1905, and to New York to do the same in 1907. For the next 11 years, she led a somewhat itinerant life of study and work.) In 1918, she moved to New York , where she continued to pursue her art, and married Alfred Stieglitz, a photographer and gallery owner, in 1924. It wasn’t until 1929 that she made it back to New Mexico, this time to Taos, as a guest of friends.
In 1934, she began what was to become a lifelong tradition of summering at Ghost Ranch, a 21,000-acre property in Abiquiu (pronounced AB-uh-cue), and returning to New York in the winter.
Five years later she bought an adobe ruin 15 miles south on Route 84, also in Abiquiu, but her Ghost Ranch cabin remained her summer retreat. With the help of her friend Maria Chabot, she gradually transformed the wreck of a house — an 18th-century core with 1860s additions — into a comfortable sanctuary with inner and outer courtyards, gardens, and an adjacent studio, all done in traditional adobe. After Stieglitz’s death in 1946, O’Keeffe moved here permanently.
Today, getting to Abiquiu is easy enough, but gaining access to O’Keeffe’s home and studio requires planning and $25. Tours, run by the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation , strive to limit the annual flow of visitors to this tiny town for the sake of those who live here and who, presumably, cherish the sleepy solitude of the place as much as O’Keeffe did. (Ghost Ranch is intact, operating as a Presbyterian retreat center with natural-history museums and miles of trails open to the public, but O’Keeffe’s cabin is off -limits. )
We had made the required reservation for a tour, which departed from the foundation office next to the Abiquiu Inn. Before shepherding the small group (the limit is 12 people) onto a minibus, the guide laid down the rules: no photos on the grounds, no note-taking or tape recording during the tour, no large bags.
Ten minutes later, the bus pulled into the shade next to the wall enclosing O’Keeffe’s property.
Following a guide through a gate, the group stopped first in the understated gardens of flowers, herbs, and vegetables, with stone walls shaded by fruit trees. Entering the walled patio, the guide pointed out a red door that appeared in several O’Keeffe paintings, including the abstract “White Patio with Red Door” (1960) .
From the courtyard we were allowed to peer through a window into the living room, which featured low couches, native rugs, and the corner fireplace typical of traditional adobe houses. It was spare yet comfortable, and, like all the rooms, remained as O’Keeffe had left it, allowing visitors to see that the love of unembellished essence that graced her work also ordered her living quarters.
Following the guide to the kitchen, the group passed a skull with curling antlers hanging on an outside wall and a ram’s skull sitting on a shelf — both O’Keeffe icons. Inside the whitewashed kitchen and pantry were neat rows of preserves and dried herbs, grown in the gardens and put up by O’Keeffe’s housekeeper. The kitchen windows looked out to a front garden and walled entry courtyard, and, over the walls, the red hills.
Minutes later we stood in the studio, a separate adobe building with a vast picture window. This sparsely furnished building, dominated by views of Pedernal, Black Mesa, and a pale cliff known as “the white place,” felt like the heart of O’Keeffe’s world. A sheet of plywood on sawhorses carried a graceful arrangement of round stones. Aside from bookcases and another plywood surface used as a desk, the other main piece of furniture was a single bed with a white spread next to the window. This was where the artist rested when she was working.
Her actual bedroom was on the other side of a wall at the far end of the studio, with a glass corner bringing her favorite views into the room. Looking out at the gray ribbon of Route 84 winding through the hills, O’Keeffe got the idea for “ Winter Road” (1963) , a mere suggestion of hills limned in calligraphic curves.
O’Keeffe’s health failed in 1984, and she moved to Santa Fe to live under the care of a long time friend, Juan Hamilton. She died two years later, and her ashes were scattered on Pedernal.
Where her spirit went next is anyone’s guess, but I like to think she left a clue in her 1958 painting “Ladder to the Moon.” In it, Pedernal’s flat-capped silhouette dominates a sliver of black land at the bottom of the canvas. Above, a pale ladder hovers in a turquoise sky, stretching toward a distant half-moon.
Contact Jane Roy Brown, a freelance writer in Western Massachusetts, at janeroybrown@verizon.net. 
People who exercise regularly experience 25% less muscle and joint pain in their old age than people who are less active. Research published in Arthritis Research & Therapy reveals that people who regularly participate in brisk aerobic exercise, such as running, experience less pain than non-runners even though they are more likely to suffer from pain from injuries.
Bruce et al.’s results show that the greater majority of physically active participants did, on average, between 355 and 2,119 minutes of exercise per week over the course of the study, while controls exercised significantly less. After adjusting for confounding factors such as gender, age, weight and health status the results show that pain increased in both groups over time. But members of the Runners’ Association experienced 25% less musculoskeletal pain than controls. This reduction persisted throughout the study period, until the subjects reached an age of 62 to 76 years.
“Exercise was associated with a substantial and significant reduction in pain even [...] despite the fact that fractures, a significant predictor of pain, were slightly more common among runners”, conclude the authors.
More research is needed to investigate the mechanisms that might underlie the effect of exercise on musculoskeletal pain in old age.
Researchers tap the `dismal science’ of economics to quantify well-being. It isn’t money that leaves you feeling like a million.
By Stuart Silverstein, Times Staff Writer
July 3, 2006
Midway into his career as a professor, USC’s Richard Easterlin deduced something that seemed astonishing, at least for an economist: Money doesn’t buy happiness.
Grandparents and sages have said as much through the ages. Yet when Easterlin published his first happiness research in the 1970s, fellow economists brushed it off. “People don’t take this as serious stuff,” he said. “They think it’s maybe cocktail party conversation.”
Things are looking up these days for Easterlin, 80, and the small but increasingly visible network of researchers relying on the so-called dismal science of economics to find the keys to happiness.
If earning more money generally does surprisingly little or even nothing to make societies happier, they wonder, what works better? Good health? Marriage? Sex? By one reckoning, boosting the frequency of sex in a marriage from once a month to once a week brings as much happiness as an extra $50,000 a year.
Happiness economists review thousands of attitude surveys and apply high-level math to calculate the satisfaction connected with activities and demographic traits. It sounds like sociology, but the economists are more apt to focus on money and work.
Consider the sex study. Through surveys and some fancy math, economists essentially created a ladder of happiness and found that the extra sex and the extra $50,000 provided the same boost.
Happiness economics, its enthusiasts emphasize, isn’t a touchy-feely enterprise. They say that it eventually could harness the power of economics to better benefit humanity and help guide public policy.
Their findings often suggest that, instead of focusing so heavily on economic growth, governments could turn more attention to things that might, in essence, cheer people up. The options include better medical care, greater job security and reduced crime. These cost money, but they don’t necessarily put more cash in a person’s pocket.
With those sorts of goals in mind, the United Kingdom is exploring the development of one or more national indicators of well-being, and a group of prominent American and foreign academics is calling on the U.S. government to do the same.
Bhutan, a small Buddhist nation in the Himalayas, has drawn international attention with plans to introduce an array of “Gross National Happiness” indicators. The measures, due by 2008, would track such areas as health and education, along with “cultural vitality and diversity” and “psychological well-being.”
Skeptics question whether this and other efforts are anything more than happy talk.
The study of happiness also attracts neuroscientists, sociologists and, in particular, psychologists. Economists sometimes collaborate with these experts, such as the one who teamed with psychologists in a study published Friday in the journal Science that reinforced the notion that money buys little happiness.
But other academics wonder if this is a place for money-minded number crunchers.
“I think whoever coined the term ‘dismal science’ was not that far off,” said Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a prominent social psychologist at the Claremont Graduate University. He said economists “see things often so much out of context and so one-dimensionally…. I wouldn’t mistake real life for what economists talk about.”
Although the findings of happiness economics can cut both ways politically, some observers see a left-leaning tendency.
“Most of the things that have been published about the policy implications of happiness research have definitely had a big-government slant to it. They’re like, ‘Here’s another reason for the government to do something else,’ ” said Will Wilkinson, a policy analyst with the libertarian Cato Institute.
Mainstream economists, accustomed to such measures as gross domestic product, frequently view the attitude surveys examined by happiness economists as squishy and subjective. They question whether any poll can scientifically measure happiness.
Easterlin and others who’ve followed his pioneering research insist it’s possible.
Enrico Marcelli, a Harvard researcher who earned his doctorate from USC, contends that his work with Easterlin shows that happiness among American adults peaks at age 51 — earlier than many other researchers had believed — and that men start becoming happier than women after the age of 48.
One possible reason for that gender gap: Men who survive into old age are more likely to be married than older women, who often must carry on alone, either widowed or divorced.
Economic thinkers considered the pursuit of happiness as far back as the late 18th century. Legal theorist Jeremy Bentham and, later, John Stuart Mill, the 19th century English philosopher and economist, wrestled with “utilitarianism,” the idea that all action should be directed toward achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
In more recent times, economists generally have been more buttoned-down. They usually portray people as rational, wealth-maximizing actors in the marketplace, and the general working assumption is that when it comes to money, more equals better.
But around 1970 — while he was at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, near Stanford — Easterlin started doubting that premise for society as a whole.
Easterlin, who already had branched out from conventional economics into demographics to study the U.S. baby boom, got acquainted with psychologists and sociologists who told him about the scattered surveys that asked people about happiness.
Easterlin gathered data from 20 nations, and the findings were perplexing. In each country, rich people reported more happiness than the poor. But that was just the beginning of the story.
In comparing nations overall, the pattern was mixed, with the happiness levels for poor countries often nearly as high as they were for richer ones. (The United States was tops in happiness, but Cuba was a close second.)
What’s more, data available from 1946 to 1970 led him to put forth what became known as the Easterlin Paradox: Even though the average U.S. family became more than 60% richer, it didn’t make Americans significantly happier. In late 1947, about 42% of Americans surveyed by one pollster pronounced themselves “very happy.” Though the numbers went up and down over the decades, a similar poll found that only 43% declared themselves “very happy” in 1970.
These results intrigued Easterlin. But colleagues, and one of his old graduate school instructors at the University of Pennsylvania, pooh-poohed the research: “You may think it’s path-breaking … but the economics profession isn’t going to buy this at all.”
By the 1990s, however, happiness economics began to emerge, with European researchers leading the way. More recently, research has picked up in the United States, building on Easterlin’s early findings. The lanky USC professor reentered the field himself just over a decade ago after fresh interest in, and criticism of, his happiness work emerged.
Particularly in the United States and other wealthy nations, “we’re just so many times richer than our grandparents were that we can afford to think, ‘Do we actually need more money now?’ ” said Andrew Oswald, a British economist widely considered one of Europe’s foremost happiness researchers.
Easterlin’s explanation for the un-budging national sense of well-being is that, despite cultural differences that predispose some countries to be happier than others, an all-too-human fact of life transcends borders. The more a nation has, the more its people expect, sinking the chance that a society’s greater wealth will lift all spirits.
In poor countries, most happiness economists differ with Easterlin and contend that rising income — when it means, say, extra food or a better roof overhead — will make people a little happier. Still, they say, happiness economics might aid governments in developing programs to protect their citizens’ rising sense of well-being.
One example: Policy-makers could promote stable employment even at the risk of spurring inflation. People don’t like rising prices but, according to various studies, “unemployment makes people very unhappy,” said Carol Graham, co-director of the Center on Social and Economic Dynamics at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
But how to reduce happiness to the figures and formulas favored by economists?
Consider the imaginative approach of Luis Rayo, an economist at University of Chicago. He applies and develops approaches from evolutionary psychology, together with mathematical analysis, to explore why people experience happiness the way they do.
Also in the mix are behavioral economists and other experimental economists, including Southern Californians Michael McBride of UC Irvine and James Konow of Loyola Marymount University.
Like psychologists, these economists bring human test subjects into the lab. For instance, McBride has explored people’s reactions to various outcomes and situations in a game of chance, “matching pennies.” He found that satisfaction suffers somewhat, even among big winners, when people hold high expectations.
Satisfaction also suffers when they find out that other players fared well. The urge not just to keep up with the Joneses but to surpass them is documented in many happiness studies.
(Put another way: Many people would welcome $6 if someone else got $5. But they’d be even happier with $5 if the other guy got $1.)
Yet the biggest names in happiness economics are the empiricists, who evaluate attitude surveys and sometimes other indicators of well-being or misery, such as suicides.
The happiness economists also are interested in finding ways to better measure the ingredients of happiness, sometimes translating them into financial values. That’s what led Oswald and a co-author, Dartmouth economist David Blanchflower, to produce the controversial — and sometimes joked about — research equating increasing the frequency of sex to $50,000 in extra income.
“We’re trying to understand how people feel and to try to get a quantitative measure of that,” said Blanchflower, a respected economist recently named to the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, which sets interest rates in Britain. “It’s actually quite a serious issue.”
When Easterlin and Oswald put together a one-day symposium on the economics of happiness at USC in March, nearly 30 leaders and up-and-comers in the field arrived from schools in England, France, Sweden and Switzerland, as well as Canada, Mexico and the United States.
One of the youngest scholars, Anke Zimmermann, 27, a USC graduate student under Easterlin’s tutelage, outlined a study showing that men and women who have lived with romantic partners before marriage enjoy a surge in happiness when they wed.
After a honeymoon period of a year or so, their sense of well-being returns to where it was before they exchanged vows. Still, they remain happier than they were before they started sharing a roof.
Other presenters pointed to further happiness research discoveries, including: When a neighborhood has lots of residents who identify with a religion, all of the neighborhood’s residents tend to be happier, even atheists; visits by friends tend to be more uplifting than visits by family members; and life satisfaction is drained far more by impaired mental health than by physical pain.
It’s clear to Easterlin that happiness is found in other ways too. Ever the teacher, he advises young people that they will find more happiness if they pursue a career they love rather than one they think will pay better.
“People think they’re going to be better off if they make more,” Easterlin said. “What they don’t take into account is that when they come home with more money, all of a sudden they decide, ‘Well, now I need a Lexus.’ ”
Which explains a comment from UC Irvine’s McBride. “People ask me all the time, ‘What do you learn about happiness? What’s the secret to happiness?’ ” McBride said. His standard answer, only half-kidding: “Low expectations.”
Copyright © 2006, The Los Angeles Times
I’m not sure exactly where I picked them up, but somehow I’ve managed to learn all the words to It’s a Long Way to Tipperary, Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag and The White Cliffs of Dover. Maybe it was CGIT camp, or a radio station that played really old “oldies,” or First World War documentaries I watched in school. Whatever the exact conditions, by some mysterious transfusion, the melodies of Vera Lynn and her contemporaries seem to have entered my bloodstream, so that I can join in any seniors’ sing-along with great gusto.
As I sat beside my grandfather last week in the singing circle at his senior home, I looked around and tried to envision my peers and me 50 years hence. And all I could picture was a horseshoe of wrinkled faces puckered up to hear the strains of the headphones strapped over their hearing aids. I imagined a persistent buzz, like that of a large colony of bumblebees, but each isolated in its own honeycomb cell.
For the men in my grandfather’s home, the sing-along acts as a regular wake-up call in their week. For some of them, it seems to break through the daze of dementia and temporarily rouse them into cheerful lucidity. The songs serve up a draft of clear, refreshing memory they can all share.
That’s because the folks of my grandfather’s generation didn’t just wave lighters in unison at a rock concert – they sang together to get through the bad times and celebrate the good. They sang as they marched off to war together (or waved from the train platform). They hummed to keep their spirits up when the stock market crashed. They entertained themselves with popular tunes at small-town picnics, and they comforted themselves with familiar hymns at the neighbourhood church.
My parents’ generation, as it ages, will still know some of the old-time hymns and show tunes. Baby boomers will have the consolation of at least a few common cultural reference points. Maybe they won’t all be able to keep up with a recording of Buddy Holly or Elvis, but at least they’ll be able to tap along together. Because boomers shaped their culture via school dances, glee clubs and a handful of radio stations, not satellite TV, their pool of collective musical memory will be a pond compared to the ocean generation Xers grew up swimming in.
By the time we 30- and 40-somethings reach old age, we could be drowning in the consequences of our cosmopolitanism. When I try to picture senior “group activities” for my group of peers, my imagination falters. That failure could be partly my mind protecting itself from the threat of its own decline. But it also, I think, shows up the way commercialized culture makes us drift apart. If I’m not already hard of hearing by the time it’s my turn to enter a home, I’m afraid the silence will deafen me.
Should my husband and I be blessed to make it to a nursing home together, I’m not sure even we could make a sing-along between us. He’ll be asking the recreation director to play a Beatles tune, and I’ll be hoping for Sarah McLachlan. Maybe the woman next to me will want Boy George, and the fellow next to her might respond only to Travis Tritt. Come mid-century, the nursing homes will be even more crowded than they are now; but, in another sense, there will be much more space between the residents. Over time, world beat won’t bear up – or bear us up – nearly as well as When Irish Eyes are Smiling.
As much as we like to babble enthusiastically about living in a “global village,” there’s a big difference between “global” and local culture. I can pick and choose my global culture – decide whether I want to buy gypsy guitar music or reggae, or whether I want Chinese or Vietnamese take-out. But truly local culture is home-made, and not the sort of “home-made” you buy at a craft show. The kind of culture that prevents senile solitude grows out of group creativity. It’s an activity, not a product, and it involves more than just me and my IPod or my DVD player.
Down the road, there’ll be a cultural gap to pay for our being so cosmopolitan in our tastes and treating culture as a commodity rather than as a community effort. Maybe I should join a glee club (if there still is one) before it’s too late. Otherwise, I guess when I pack up all my trinkets in my old kit bag to head for my room in “the home,” I’ll need to take with me my personally eclectic audio menu. I’m sure whatever music technology I’ll have will be outdated, so I just hope the recreation director will be able to play it.