Lynn Ruth Miller - Ridiculously Old and Getting Better

RIDICULOUSLY OLD AND GETTIING BETTER:

Ageless Lessons from a Very Old Stand-Up Comedian

By Lynn Ruth Miller

Second Edition, 2021

2021 Eldership Academy Press.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief reviews, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without written permission of the publisher.

Published by Eldership Academy Press

March 2021, San Francisco, California

Paperback Second Edition ISBN: 978-0-98470-979-3

eBook First Edition ISBN: 978-0-64511-171-2

1. Comedy | 2. Aging | 3. Gerontology

4. Stand Up | 5. Philosophy | 6. Psychology

Printed and distributed worldwide by IngramSpark

FOREWORD

At sixty-three I am caught in the middle of a busy life. I am smitten by Lynn, her freedom to move any which way she is called: Pacifica, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Dortmund, Brighton, Paris. A few years ago she lost her house in foreclosure. She had lived in it for some twenty-eight years. A few years earlier, she had broken her heel. Living on a hill in Pacifica, she had a difficult time getting around. Her neighbors were not around to helpeither they were busy or they just ignored her. I told her that she did not want to be living in such a neighborhood, so it was good that she lost the house. The universe takes care of our attachments.

Its a common belief that older adults are always tired, ornery and unhappy. Movies, TV commercials and late night punch lines all assume older adults are hapless buffoons with nothing better to do than yell Get off of my lawn! They also prefer to complain endlessly about their physical ailments to anyone who will listen.

This is largely a myth. While physical and cognitive decline are a natural part of the aging process, the truth of aging is very different than popular culture would have us believe.

Humans are actually the happiest at the early and late times of their lives. Stanfords Laura Carstensen calls it The Happiness Curve or the U-Curve of Happiness and shes spent over three decades researching the topic. Head of the Stanford Center on Longevity, Carstensens research on happiness found that older adults were actually happier overall than at any other time in their life since childhood. They are happier than their teenage years, their twenties and thirties, happier even than when they became wealthy and successful.

Carstensen says there is one key to her findings: time. When humans realize that they have less time left, they savor life more. They shift their perspective and spend more emotional energy on what matters.

In his forties, author of The Happiness Curve Jonathan Rauch had noticed both in himself and his middle-aged friends a steadily rising dissatisfaction with their existence. It didnt seem to correlate with the external world since he and his friends were all successful by societys standards, with good jobs and plenty of money. It wasnt depression or anxiety, but more accurately a confusing malaise, an almost existential ennui, something he termed an accumulated drizzle of disappointment. Drip, drip, drip.

What Rauch had discovered was precisely what wisdom traditions have known for centuries, even millennia. True happiness doesnt spring from wealth or success. It arises spontaneously when we learn to value compassion and connection over competition and achievement.

The great 13th century Persian love poet Rumi wrote that the fruit thats the ripest hangs the lowest a nod to the aging process. Chinese sages tell us the bamboo that stands the tallest also bows the deepest. The German philosopher Goethe said that the highest achievement in life means deepening both our personalities and our understanding of the world. Lynn Ruth Miller tells us to live our lives at any age.

Nader R. Shabahangi

CO-DIRECTOR, ELDERSHIP ACADEMY PRESS