Happiness

After reading the last article on "Happiness" since I'm 67 I thought I would share regarding my own happiness or not in my life.

Here are some of the things I have found:
1. If you had a relatively easy childhood with good parents often your 20s are going to be difficult.
2. IF you had a hard childhood where parents broke up and other difficulties either your 20s will be really good (because you got used to adversity growing up) or your life might end in your 20s (usually one or the other). However, I meet kids often (throughout my life) that had a tough life growing up that were very happy in their 20s but not necessarily in their 30s and beyond.

So, just because one stage of your life is happy doesn't mean all stages will be happy.

In my own life I had to deal with whooping cough and Childhood epilepsy. So, it wasn't until I was 15 that my life was relatively normal and so God was very important in being able to physically and psychologically stay alive until I was 15 or 16. I found believing in God helpful in staying alive in my 20s too.

My 20s were very difficult. People might say, "Well. You had so many girlfriends. You were lucky to have all that."

But, the truth is you only need one good one to stay with you throughout your life.

Having a lot of girlfriends is actually more confusing than anything else. Because each of them is different and you have to get used to each new one for a day, a week, a month, a year or whatever. So, life is sort of spontaneous and you never really know what is going to happen next good or bad.

The one good thing about having a lot of girlfriends is I learned what I liked and what I didn't like being with so many women. So, I could easily look at any new woman in my life with a much more realistic assessment of what actually could work for me and what couldn't within a few minutes or days of that relationship.

Whereas less experienced people might choose the wrong person, get them pregnant, and then just be in for a life of hell with that person not understanding what they really need in a relationship, and that that person was a really bad choice in the end.

I would say being with the right person is everything in life, from raising kids together to not wanting to kill each other because of your differences.

The most important thing regarding relationships and happiness is mutual respect and loyalty. If you don't have that and don't foster that then life can really be miserable.

The most unhappy I have ever been in my life was the last 7 years of a 14 year marriage to my 2nd wife. I have never been more unhappy or lonely in all my life than those 7 years after my father died.

So, deaths of family members can ruin your life too. Don't expect to be okay when you lose someone important in your life. For me, it threw me into middle aged crazy at 37 when my Dad died and I didn't really come out of that until I had almost died of a heart virus at 50.

However, I was so grateful to be alive that I got over worrying about dying ever and have been relatively happy ever since by just being grateful for each new day of life. And that has coincided (the last 17 years with my 3rd marriage which works really well and so we are happy because we both love and respect each other and are each others best friends.

So, in the end, happiness comes and goes and comes and goes at different times in your life. So, the important thing is to stay alive because happiness may find you again and again and again.