Happiness in your 60s and 70s
Happiness won’t just land in your lap, it is a choice made daily. Stephanie Ockhuysen speaks to people aged 8 to 94 who make that choice.
‘‘We have gone through some really tough financial times but you can’t let it get you down.’’
Denis Wheeler, above
Between breaking into song, Gloria Webby explains that in her 70s, good health is vital to her happiness.
‘‘I can actually get up in the morning and bounce out of my bed, lots of people my age can’t.
‘‘It is such a drain if you don’t have your health.’’
Happiness is insinuated into our society as the single most important factor to living the ‘‘good’’ life. Yet most of us struggle to describe exactly what it is and have little idea how to get there.
Once you reach your 60s and
70s, like Webby, happiness is about your attitude, good health and grandchildren.
But to be honest, there are not many things that don’t make Webby happy.
If we can put on a cheerful attitude, she says, we are halfway there.
For some that is easier said than done.
New Zealand is in the grip of a mental health crisis where so many of us not only find happiness indescribable but ultimately deem it unattainable.
Figures show one in eight New Zealanders over the age of
15 are now on antidepressants. New Zealand has long had a reputation of telling people to ‘‘harden up’’ and sweep issues under the rug rather than talk about them.
However, in the past five years an open dialogue around mental health has started with people in the spotlight such as Mike King and Sir John Kirwan being prominent advocates.
When you are feeling down, Webby has got a secret trick.
‘‘On the roof of your mouth there is a little gland that I call my happy button and I just roll my tongue over it and press on it for a few moments and suddenly I feel the adrenalin rush and I want to smile.
‘‘Don’t tell anyone.’’
For Webby, family, friends, people in general, music, the ukulele, and laughing are among the things that make her happy.
She has always been a happy person, which she puts down to her ‘‘charmed life’’ and upbringing, but what produces that happiness has changed with every decade.
Age is just a number, she wants you to know, and she is really only 25 inside.
As a child, happiness came from something instant and easily accessible. In her teens, it was relationships with the opposite gender.
She goes to carry on but breaks into song again – ‘‘If I had a fine romance with no kisses,’’ she belts out.
With marriage, her happiness depended on Norm, her husband of 55 years, being happy, and then when she had children, she felt a kind of happiness she had never known.
Then, there were grandchildren who Webby calls six of the most amazing children.
Philosophy professor Bill Fish says there are two groups of happiness – the feeling of being happy and getting a dopamine release, which comes and goes, and then long-term happiness, the idea of living a happy life.
‘‘You can live a happy life but still have bad things happen like grief and trauma.’’
However, we can’t really know if someone has lived a happy life until the end, he says.
Fish says we all have a default level of happiness, things knock us up and down from that, but we always return to that default.
‘‘Even significant things like winning the lottery don’t lead to significant long-term changes in that default level.’’
There are multiple sources of happiness in life but Fish says the most fulfilling are relationships, a sense of meaning or purpose, choice and autonomy, security, and being in touch with nature.
Denis Wheeler can tick many of that list off.
At 61, he has a wife of 39 years, two children, five grandchildren, a sense of purpose with his business, and is out whitebaiting and golfing regularly.
He has got nothing to be unhappy about, he says.
He is four years away from 65 but ‘‘Wheels’’, as he is known, says people let themselves down gunning for the supposed haven that is retirement.
‘‘I will never retire as such. You aim to get to 65 and retire and do nothing but it does not work out that way.
‘‘You get bored.’’ Setting and achieving goals have played a large part in his happiness. Without them, he says, you can’t get to where you want to be.
Happiness is a contentment to Wheeler that is earned and not bought. You don’t have to be rich, he says.
‘‘I have got a helluva mortgage but I am still happy.
‘‘We have gone through some really tough financial times but you can’t let it get you down.
‘‘There is always an answer, there is always a way out.’’
Tomorrow: The Choice in your 80s and 90s.