the happiness curve: why life gets better after 50 (jonathon rauch)
i’m honestly not sure what to make of this book. i was about to drop it about halfway through. the first half is a regurgitation of the “U” curve “discovery” coming at it from various angles. to summarize, happiness is a U-shaped curve that has its trough in middle age, precise placement of the trough varies to some degree by culture and seems to move slightly to the right with life expectancy and our cultural recognition of new stages of life.
side note: we didn’t really even recognize adolescence until a little over a hundred years ago. which makes sense given how society has shifted and cultural norms have changed to make youth and young adulthood longer than they have been for the previous couple hundred-thousand years.
the book picks up on the back half with some cogent discussion of how to get through the trough, and what we can do individually and socially to maximize happiness. this includes some “mom and apple pie” advice, which i suppose is good to remember.
there’s a clear thread about social engagement and in-person interaction. as someone who’s lived their life “remotely” and/or traveling continuously this hits particularly close to home (no pun intended).
on balance, i find that i’ve been able to experience an incremental rise in personal happiness over my life. this has been directly coupled to changes in personal relationships, employment changes that got better each time and developing an awareness of what does/doesn’t make sense to invest in or get lathered up about.
a good chunk of this personal satisfaction likely comes from coming to a better understanding of what you consider to be personally important and where you derive your satisfaction and sense of personal worth. which, to the book’s credit is pretty well covered.
it’s probably worth revisiting the back half of this book on occasion to level-set on whether i’m pointing myself in the right direction.
meta
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