Just after finishing my recent post on The Rebellion of Silence, I came across an article in The New York Times that reinforced one of the points I was making; namely, that happiness doesn’t necessarily come from being the toast of the town, or on the cutting edge of new trends and “buzz.”
In the article, Jane Brody wrote about a new book that’s been published by Cornell University researchers who’ve compiled “30 Lessons from Living” from “more than 1,000 older Americans from different economic, educational and occupational strata.”
Among other things, Brody noted, “not one person in a thousand said their happiness accrued from working as hard as you can to make money to buy whatever you want. Rather, the near-universal view was summed up by an 83-year old former athlete who worked for decades as an athletic coach and recruiter: ‘The most important thing is to be involved in a profession that you absolutely love, and that you look forward to going to work to every day.'”
Another reason to shed the guilt of disconnecting from being in the center of such a fast-moving information cycle, if that’s what your heart really wants to do. Even if it means someone else grabs the brass ring of the moment’s attention, you aren’t really missing out on anything that matters, in the long run.
I haven’t read the book Brody was reviewing, but the book (30 Lessons for Living by Karl Pillemer) or the website about the research project itself might be well worth checking out.
Letting go of the “shore of the majority” is a goal I long to achieve. I foolishly don’t because I make the money excuse…