How We Live
Happiness Is What We Really Want
Gretchen Heuring | 02.24.09
Doesn't matter how old or young we are, we all want to be happy. Can we be happy every day? Shirley MacLaine, in Life Can Begin at 60, says,
"Experiencing and living life should become limitless when we age. Aging should be liberating. We no longer have the same concerns we had in our youth. After middle age, the pursuit of happiness should be our goal." |
We have tremendous freedom to choose our lifestyles. We can travel, or paint, or write. We can move to a place where it's nice to retire, a whole new community to explore. We can move nearer to our children or other loved ones. We can stay in our home longer than ever before, with new technologies and skilled people to help us. Children can move in with us (or we with them) building new multigenerational lifestyles. There are senior villages and alternative lifestyles that would have raised our parent's eyebrows, for sure.
Nice Places to Retire
Every few months, I come upon a new list of nice places to retire. Some locations show up again and again because of the weather, golf courses, scenery, and great sense of community for older persons. Recently there has been more interest in locations outside the US where life is slow, easy, friendly, and low cost. We highlight new "finds" every month or so and, as always, give you a chance to comment and say what you think. >> More
Staying In Your Home
There was a time when most of us thought that we would have to leave home one day. We love the spot where we always put our Christmas tree. We enjoy, through the window, the seasonal changes to the now fully grown pear tree we planted so many years ago. And we take pleasure in the look of our comfortable couch against the wallpaper we hung ourselves. This is home. We know where everything is (well, almost everything). It is our place.
There is a great movement afoot that allows us to stay in our homes as long as possible. Researchers and economists agree that keeping us in our own homes costs less money, and we live better and longer. >> More
Moving Near Children
We are living longer and healthier. Breakthroughs is medicine and understanding the benefits of good nutrition and exercise have lengthened our healthy and productive time. We are living at least ten and possible as many as forty more years than our parents did. So many of us are moving closer to our children. It's a big decision to leave home and move to a new place, but we are called to do this by our quest for happiness. It makes us happy to be with our children and grandchildren. So we uproot ourselves and move nearer to them. >> More
In Our Later Years We Help Our Parents Move
We help our parents move. They move to assisted living, or to a smaller home, or nearer to us, or in with us. They resist and we become our parent's parents. Not understood by anyone until we are in the process. This is a difficult and challenging time. >> More
We Move Our Parents In With Us Or We Move In With Them
It has been somewhere between twenty-five and fifty years since we lived with our parents but now we must move in together again. Perhaps is is for financial reasons and we are combining our resources. More likely, they need us to take care of them. We create space in our homes and our lives. In time, we become caretakers.
