Hello Readers!
Here is the first issue of The Pleasure Principle: Savoring Life After 50.
Are the good times behind us once we turn 50? Quite the contrary! The following graph, by Nathan Yau, is based on data from the well-being module of the American Time Use Survey, taken from the US Census. People were asked to score their life satisfaction from 0 to 10, where10 is the best possible life and 0 is the worst possible life. This is the average score by age.
Life satisfaction takes a big dip at 20 and rises somewhat after that. But then it surges ahead, reaching a peak at age 73 or so! It declines only a little after that, never falling to the levels of ages 30 and 40.
So don’t pity the old or look back to the splendors of youth! Big data tells us: true happiness lies ahead!
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Before I was a writer, I was a reader. And when I was in my teens and twenties, two authors thrilled and shocked me deeply. The first was Philip Roth, whose short stories showed contemporary Jews in a deeply ambiguous light. “You can’t do that!” I thought with delight and fear. Would people, including other Jews, attack him for saying those things? (They did, of course.) When E.L. Doctorow put historical figures in Ragtime, I had the same excited thought: “That’s not possible!” You can’t mix fiction and history! Until he did.
Roth and Doctorow are dead now, along with John Updike, that literary writer about sex. The idols of my youth are gone, but I will continue to celebrate their boldness. And emulate it, too, if I can! Old and bold, baby! That’s my motto (and a visual “pun”). I hope some of that spirit is in my new book, Cybill Unbound (Heliotrope Books, February 14, 2023).
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During the pandemic, many of my friends let their hair go gray, and now gray hair is a fashion statement. Gray-heads say it’s easier. Healthier. More natural. And it can certainly be flattering, especially on young midlife women. Recently, at an arts festival, I couldn’t take my eyes off a jewelry vendor whose shining white hair framed a smooth, rosy face. She was, perhaps, fifty, and she looked great. Similarly, a tanned cashier at my local Trader Joe’s rocks a headful of short, gray curls. “I bet you get a lot of compliments on your hair,” I said. “I do!” she replied. There wasn’t a wrinkle on her face. The hair was intriguing because it was anomalous. Oh to be 50 again!
Last year I wrote “Why Are We Obsessed About Our Hair?” for the Ethel, the AARP newsletter.
If you are a woman with hair, you may relate!
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Random Tip:
You have come upstairs . . . but why? One way to remember what you came up for is to picture yourself where you were when you had that impulse to go upstairs. Recreating that little scene downstairs helps you remember the reason you came upstairs!
Until next week, enjoy your age!
Catherine