８月が終わり、夏が終わるが、今年の夏は人生の一つ曲がり角であったと忌の際で思うであろう。
少なくとも、死に支度のうちの一つは片付いた。
人に家を買はせて我は年忘れ(芭蕉)
人生を判ったつもりはありませんが、以下のエッセイに共感する齢にたち至ったのは悦ばしいことと思っております。
祝い事がありましたので、コーラクに立ち寄り独り祝盃を上げました。
コーラクの大将は前の店でなついていた野良猫に毎日餌を運んでいるそうだ。
サッカーの影響でしょうか、コーラクに客はなく、誰か来るまでと居たら三杯飲んでしまった。
春宵の酒場にひとり酒啜る誰か来んかなあ誰あれも来るな(石田比呂志)
U-bend, Dec 18th 2010 P33 N2P116 人生の成熟と幸福感、安寧(抜粋)
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People, studies show, behave differently at different ages. Older people have fewer rows and come up with better solutions to conflict. They are better at controlling their emotions, better at accepting misfortune and less prone to anger. In one study, for instance, subjects were asked to listen to recordings of people supposedly saying disparaging things about them. Older and younger penple were simply saddened, but older people less angry and less inclined to pass judgement, taking the view, as one put it, that ゛you can't please all the people all the time.゛
There are various theories as to why this might be so. Laura Carstensen, professor of psychology at Stanford University, talks of ゛the uniquely human ability to recognise our own mortality and monitor our own time horizons゛. Because the old know they are closer to death, she argues, they grow better at living for the present. They come to focus on things that matter now - such as feelings - and less on long-term goals. ゛When young people look at older people, they think how terrifying it must be nearing the end of your life. But older people know what matters most.゛ For instance, she says, ゛young people will go to cocktail parties because they might meet somebody who will be useful to them in the future, even though nobody I know actually likes going to cocktail parties.゛
There are other possible explanations. Maybe the sight of contemporaries keeling over infuses survivors with a ditermination to make the most of their remaining years. Maybe people come to accept their strengths and weaknesses, give up hoping to become chief executive or have a picture shown in the Royal Acadmy, and learn to be satirfied as assistant branch manager, with their watercolour on display at church fete. ゛Being an old maid゛, says one of the characters in a story by Edna Ferber, an (unmarried) American novelist, was ゛like death by drowning - a really delightful sensation when you ceased struggling゛. Perhaps acceptance of aging itself is a source of relief. ゛How pleasent is the day゛ observed William James, an American philosopher, ゛when we give up striving to be young - or slender゛.
Whatever the cause of the U-bend, it has consequencer beyond the emotional. Happiness doesn't just make people happy - it also makes them healthier. John Weinman, professor of psychiatry at King's College London, monitored the stress levels of a group of volunteers and then inflicted small wounds on them. The wounds of the least stressed healed twice as fast as those of the most stressed. At Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, Sheldon Cohen infected people with cold and flu viruses. He found that happier types were less likely to catch the virus, and showed fewer sympotoms of illness when they did. So although old people tend to be less healthy than younger ones, their cheerfulness may help counteract their cumbliness.
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