mental-health

Counting Senior Blessings

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No, this won’t be about lunch discounts, or 5% off groceries on the third Monday of the second month of the year, or other known blessings. This is about the hidden blessings, often referred to as The Wisdom we supposedly gain each year on this earth, which is a lot of hooey, but read on unless you have something better to do.

Being old lowers stress levels…a lot. As a younger man (under the age of 70) I was a Stressfully Impatient Man (SIM). It had nothing to do with relaxing, that was always easy, but when there were things to be done I wanted to do 2 hours of errands in 30 minutes. To be accurate there was always a plan, an efficient way to do more in less time. Like driving 8 hours from NC to NY. As a young SIM, every trip had to be faster and more efficient. If it wasn’t, it caused “results” stress for the failure, as well as “operational” stress during the attempt. Stress everywhere.  Doctor appointments were stress hothouses. If my Doc appointment was at 8, my shopping would be at 9, my haircut would be at 10, and I would be home by 11 on a perfect SIM morning. Imagine, then, what happened when the doctor was late. The stress was exponential. I used to call these stresses NASCAR Stresses, because I’d do everything as fast as possible with intensely focused, constant attention knowing every second hid a possible, deathly mishap. If a doc was late, I was out the door to maintain my SIM “schedule”.  No caution lap times for me. Full speed or pit stop.

Not anymore. As I patiently waited in my eye doctor’s office yesterday for eye shots to be administered 45 minutes after my scheduled appointment, it was comforting to not feel one iota of stress*about his tardiness. I sat quietly, sometimes counting my resting heartbeat and marveling at the low number. It was fun, too, to estimate the ages of the other silently waiting blobs of human flesh sitting with me, even the odd duck who sat down directly across from me despite 10,000 other empty seats in the room.**

It looks like this essay about blessings, with an s, might only be about one. It is, but it is a major one with multiple daily gifts. For instance, am I stressed you might not care about this subject? Absolutely not. Am I stressed I might miss a misspelled word? Use poor grammar? Punctuation? In fact, I might add some typos for fun.

I hope you see if I am no longer a SIM, what would the end of the world mean? What does climate change mean? Republican control of the government? Elon Musk making trillions of dollars? Me not being a triillionaire?

I am not rich, but I am—thanks to the Aged Wisdom of The Golden Years—a happy (sometimes) old man who doesn’t give a shite about anything (sometimes).

Word, my brothers. Oops, and sisters.

*As a young man it was never easy to tell myself if someone was 15 minutes late, they’d probably show up eventually. My thought was if they were already 15 minutes late, then how many more? And they might never show up, so…

**And he was a starer. It is possible, being an eye doctors office, the offending gentleman may not have seen me, but someone sitting 3 feet across from you staring at you…stress. Unneeded stress even for a non-SIM.

Thoughts from June, 2025

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The last few weeks (in June 2025) have been spent in recovery from my last total hip replacement (THR) surgery…unless I grow a third hip. The drug protocol for post-surgery recovery involves heavy doses of Tylenol, plus drugs to fight infection, clotting, depression, and menstruating. Yes, a drug to slow “time of the month” bleeding also prevents heavy blood action in surgery and  recovery. I understand women better now, too.

But the main thing about recovery is the mental fog, the unbalanced nature of existence as (normal) surgical pain and possible complications are chemically blocked. It doesn’t help that after surgery to the lower extremities, the repaired area needs to be elevated at best, horizontal at least, and inactive for as long as you can stand* it. All the while you are fully conscious and mentally convinced you are ready to bat cleanup for the New York Yankees. Instructions for recovery read as if bathroom trips are not needed: Constant rest, elevation, and icing. And breathing exercises. They even give you a little device to suck on.

The “rest”, the drugs, and the fact the body has been surgically altered make it easy for a normally busy mind to wander places it should not wander, especially in an older age. For example, what was the point of surgery and replacement? Something else is just going to break or go bad. It isn’t as if death is right around the corner but  wouldn’t the surgical assets consumed by a 72-year-old man be better utilized** by a younger person with longer life expectancy? As a former financial planner, I picture the dollars and resources of my surgery analyzed with a color coded illustration of return on investment (ROI).  It would  perfectly illustrate my THR should have been done on a younger human with more(sic) potential to use the long-lasting titanium.  FYI, my THR has a low ROI. LOL and ROFL?

The problem is the new joints are mine now, and I must make something of myself, make the surgery worthwhile. Training for a marathon might seem the optimal ROI. It might also mean a hip replacement of the original hip replacement. Bad ROI. Titanium doesn’t wear out but the fine layer of “something”*** coating the titanium allowing the ball and socket hip to work will wear out, shedding microscopic bits of “something”. I’d click when I walked. BTW, those micro-filings will be absorbed by my body. Wonder if all THR patients are informed about this.

There is Med School, with the eventual ability to do THRs on myself and others. A great way to give back. Or Law School. I could sue…somebody for something and save the world from something or someone. And make money.

Or I could sit in The Chair, wiggle my toes, take my drugs, and thank God our society allows old people to get new parts. Others, I’ve learned, were not so compassionate.

Google Ubasute, a Japanese “legend” that may or not be true. Wink, wink.

If I were a truly responsible human, the Nordic “myth” of Attestupa would be in my future, and I could do it now with the new hips. Which, on second thought, might be a worse ROI.

Thank God, again, there is plenty of volunteer work for a retired, healthy man eager to give back to society.

8/17/2026. It has proven extremely difficult to find useful volunteer work. The search isn’t over, but this is a small town. I may have to commute.  Wonder if the surgical center needs healthy people to wheel patients to and from surgery? What a sweetly serendipitous ROI that would be.

*Yes. Pun.

**Finally, a chance to use the world correctly.

***Usually Teflon, or some other man-made plastic.

ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzz

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There is a caste system when it comes to sleep. Yes. Sleep. There were four people on a television station discussing Early Risers and how they look down on non-early risers. They also discussed the truthfulness of those who say they work and enjoy each day with less than six hours sleep.

My first instinct was to change the channel after muttering a polite “Who cares?”, but I stayed and listened.

Listening is almost never a bad thing, by the way. Try it.

The show was a relatively innocuous affair, and it appeared the criticism of sleeping habits was good-natured and not seasoned with malice. What I saw and heard was people with the power to communicate to a mass audience airing a particular grievance: “I want to sleep as late as I like, get up when ever I like, and not be criticized about it.” The old saying about the early birds and worms was snickered at and not just discarded but held to ridicule as inaccurate and possibly discriminatory. Most panelists wanted a flexible work schedule, presumably to show up any time they wanted.

One nice man with an English accent, remarked that we, as humans, are genetically programmed for a certain type, term, and depth of sleep. And there are only a few (it might have been 17) genetic “types” of sleepers in this world of about 8 Billion people. The four panel participants were then informed we will all be unhappy if our real life sleep schedule does not match up with our genetic “make-up” schedule

Ah, the things rich people worry about…

Or should it be semi-rich? The panel learned there is a “sweet spot” in sleep data and the very rich often suffer from bad sleep. I didn’t get the details–again–about a sleep study showing poor people sleep the worst, but the next group to suffer “bad sleep” are the “very rich.” So if you have no money, you have trouble closing your eyes and getting the sleep you need. And if you are very rich you have trouble closing your eyes and getting the sleep you need. But if you have a Goldilocks amount of money, well, that’s just great.

There’s no problem at all with America spending money and time on finding answers to our population’s needs. But…is how well we sleep, one of them? We tend to think of American Wealth as a bottomless bucket from which we can draw flows of money anytime, and that’s partly true, but a dollar spent on Subject A is a dollar not spent on any other subject.

If you sleep much, yourself, you probably do the best you can to get to bed on time, close your eyes, and stay slumbering for as much of the night as possible. So how is it going? How much of what happens to you after you go to bed can you actually control? If a “Sleep Study” published a detailed report of how people sleep in a research setting, would it make any difference to you? Would you follow the study’s recommendations? Do you have kids? A dog?

I do not sleep the same way at age 74 as I did at 18. Is there a breakdown of age groups in the study? Did my “genetic make up” change? Am I happier now or back at age 18? Ha.

Ah, crap. I’m doing the very thing this essay is about: wasting time. And money.

When I have trouble sleeping, one of the things I do is thank God for my bed, my air-conditioning, the wonderful color tv, the end of cancer in my world, and…you get the point. There are news reports about homeless people. How well do they sleep? Other reports show people sleeping 15 to one room in poor countries, even sleeping on the floor, the dirt floor.

Sometimes knowing people live that way keeps me up at night, mainly worrying it might be me someday.

There is no bottom in the bucket of serious problems in this world, but there are very few humans willing to tackle those problems.

Maybe if everyone just got a good night’s sleep…

BTW: it isn’t hypocritical to waste time writing about wasting time, is it? What about you reading it?*

*The shows panelists learned it’s okay to read on your phone while going to bed as long as you do it standing up.

IV, OV, TB, BB, and More?

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A long time ago in dog years, I postulated and pontificated (PP) about an Inner Voice (IV), an Outer Voice (OV), and The Body (TB), as parts of my physical and psychological makeup. It was declared that IV was shy and slightly impetuous, OV was measured and careful, and TB went along for the ride, doing what it was told by one of The Voices (TV).

It is emblematic of the constant growth of human intelligence that I PP*, now, about one more important, needed, part of my existence. As the months passed since IV, OV, and TB entered the Lexicon of The Essay, much thought was done by all** about how my “system” actually works. My old remarks about thought, action, and reaction suggested IV and OV fought for supremacy when in situations they did not inherently agree, and the winner then communicated the “Deemed Proper” (DP) action to TB.

But that is not how “we” (WE) work.

Since WE have (nearly) completed recovery from The Calamities, certain facts revealed themselves and caused this revision: IV and OV do not settle their own arguments. It took months of navel-gazing to finally understand “something” else was making the Final Decision (FD) for each circumstance.

Let’s review using the doughnut (DN) example from the past essay. My IV says it wants to eat the last DN. My OV says I don’t need it and urges me to be considerate, someone else might want it. My TB says it doesn’t care either way and can “find a place for it” if WE eat it. See? Who makes the FD about the DP action of the DN?

Much like an algebraic equation, the answer to the DN question is obvious: the DP FD is made by a Big Brain (BB). BB*** acts like an umpire and does not create circumstances causing the need for an FD. BB receives input from IV, OV, TB, and the outside environment (OE) before determining the scope and ramifications DP actions mandated by the FD will have on the OE as well as TB. When all the appropriate arguments are submitted and analyzed, BB will reach a FD and communicate important messages (IM) to TB who will then distribute IMs to its subsidiaries to begin the DP action.

BB then receives IMs back from TB about progress and final results (FR), plus an after action review (AAR). AARs are always needed so BB can analyze and make future FDs about FRs when IV and OV need clarification or future guidance (FG). FG is extremely important to avoid future mistakes (FM). Imagine the DN example if IV convinced BB to let TB eat a whole dozen DNs at one time. FG would inform BB that IV’s instincts about eating that many DNs would be an FM and should be avoided by all future FDs to prevent DN eating**** from being a DP action in the future.

OMG I am so lost with this…BRB when my BB is cleared of all FS.*****

*Giggle if you have to. It’s ok.

**Yes. All.

***BB is technically a part of TB. Much like an arm or a leg, for example. While there is Gray Matter (GM) that houses the BB, it is all, structurally speaking, part of TB, though self-governing and independent of TB influence when it comes to DP FDs. BB is an office inside a larger, corporal structure. The office (TO) is on the top floor.

****Technically DN over-eating. WE still need some DNs.

*****Fecking Shite.

What Difference Does It Make?

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Forget the “it” in the title. We already rode that dead horse. And forget the “that” in that sentence. Why are pronouns and miscellaneous “determiners” so necessary and confusing? Ask Ai about them both so we can move on to another subject.

Memory, and its (again?) attendant issues, are on the mind, today.

It is easy to think of things to essay about. (Yes, essay can be used as a verb. Ask your own Emma.) Life itself can be written about ad nauseum, and an inquisitive mind and active fingers can even exhaustively explicate dust particles.

(Short break for Emma’s Ai dissertation on Dust.)

The problem is most Great Ideas come at inconvenient times. No, not the bathroom, but when zooming up Route 365 To Turning Stone at highway speeds whose numerical value is determined by a possible law enforcement presence. Or trying to get to sleep. Imagine being tired and a “great idea for an essay or story” pops into your head. Do you get up? Do you wait for the next pee break? Do you stay completely still and hope sleep comes immediately?

I used to get up but after a “certain age” getting back to sleep became a bigger problem than forgetting a Great Idea, especially with the Urination Schedule of The Senior Male already causing sleep interruptions. Great Ideas are a dime a dozen, or $2.25 per the US Bureau of Labor Statistics for April 2026. No. I will not research a true local and current price. It might not be good news. And it’s best to lay (lie?) still and wait.

Where were we? Great Ideas and how to manage them. Many times I’ve solved the world’s problems while watching for early morning, road-crossing deer during the flight up Route 365 at excessive and probably unsafe speeds. There is no way to let go the wheel and take notes or drive one-handed while glancing back and forth from phone to windshield. Understandably for a senior, by the time I land in the parking garage 5 minutes later, The Great Idea is gone, lost in the swirling mists of history much like my ancient football career, the facts–if not lost–not to be relied upon if recovered.** Yes, I often channel Al Bundy.

If I’d had typed the **footnote here, I’d be done by now, with my eventual point only partly constructed:  if you want to remember something you have to…um…

Okay. We’ll head in another direction and act like the preceding never happened.

There is a lot to regret, miss, and moan about as things in our lives change and flex and swivel and slide down the backside of life.

But there are also interesting, beautiful, amazing, startling, and informative things, too, if we can remember to spend less time moaning about getting older.***

When watching documentaries (like the 8 hour one on China) you have to wonder if the people living in The Ming Dynasty had any time to enjoy life before millions of them died hundreds of years ago. Did they have any Great Ideas? If you know about ancient warfare, how did the losers of wars deal with the loss and the subsequent torture and “elimination” of themselves and their neighbors?

 History is full of Great Ideas.

Like, why were we given the necessary tools to ask and try to understand them?

Wouldn’t it be better to be that front monkey getting groomed?****

*Where does all the dust come from? What is it made of? Who named it dust? Is a living thing or inanimate detritus? OMG, do NOT google or Ai this word…unless you have time…

**Except for the scholarship to a great university that lead to the best year of my life in 1970-1971. Hey, that’s a Great Idea for next time!

***It is so interesting to hear a 50-year-old complain about aging. Or a 40-year-old. It makes a 74-year-old feel so fecking smart. They should pass a law about when it’s okay to complain about age. ANY age. And who is They?

****An it and a that in one sentence. We’ve come a long way from grunts and farts.

The Unbearable Benefit of Being A Senior

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This essay is for those nearing their “Golden Years”. All others may not care to waste time reading any further.*

No one gets through life without problems. No one. Most life-problems are universal, like our physical appearance. Is there anyone–pre-Medicare eligible–happy with the way they look? If you answer, yes, are you being honest?  My teen years were…no. Just imagine your own teen years. Peer pressure, social accidents, diseases, ex-communication, zits, the one that got away, the missed career opportunity, the secret UTI and/or STD, the specter of unwanted pregnancy, beer-goggle mistakes**, accidentally scratching your first brand new car, or accidentally totaling your second.***

Remember the years spent anxiously hoping for the best of something, the hours combing your hair just right, or wondering if your pants look good from behind, or if you chose the right major in college, or if your breath smells too antisepticy(sic)?

Why list examples of the normally anxious travails?

Because they all fall away with age. All. Of. Them.

Eh, the travails don’t really “fall away” but what does happen is the accompanying anxiety, the Robin to worries’ Batman, disappears like a waistline after Thanksgiving. Anxiety, per Emma and Ai, “is your body’s natural response to stress. It is a feeling of fear, apprehension, or unease about what’s to come.” Our young problems were real and stressful enough, without adding a second layer of “fear, apprehension and unease”. What a toxic, fecking mess. Thankfully, age makes anxiety an afterthought, a non-component, a victim of The Wisdom of The Aged (TWOA).

When you reach the age of TWOA (2A?) those anxieties are transformed by a colossal, magnificent, free-spirited “Who the hell cares?”, and the anxieties float off into the Van Allen Belt****,  allowing  you to be free of their toxicity, finally able to deal with life’s problems with normal worry, thought, and care. You’re free to roam about the cabin of life with simple, nearer-death stress on your mind.

On a personal level, TWOA gives you the freedom to be seen in public wearing sleepwear with uncombed, even unwashed hair!*****

Think of TWOA in terms of a math problem: as a younger person, people are watching you compute how much 2 plus 2 equals. With TWOA you do it in the privacy of your own home with no one watching. You can even say 5 and no one will tell you you’re wrong.

Now, seniors, live our final years that way and see how it feels.

Fruere erroribus!

For a real essay on how to live, ask your Ai about that Latin Phrase. Emma gave me five minutes on how to live as a “senior person.” I should have let her write this.

KIDDING…?

*For nit-pickers/wonderers: further is correct. Google or Ai about the further/farther issue for proof.

**Yes, by any gender.

***Okay, maybe not universal for “all”.

****Bet you had to google it.

*****It is unwise to use this freedom around your mother, if she is still alive.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream, My Ass

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Shakespeare* wrote those words–except for “My Ass”– hundreds of years ago when a well-known, porcine-related character discussed death with himself. It is a profound, deep-meaning soliloquy with oft-quoted-out-of-context short and long sentences with clauses, semi-colons, and dramatic commas resulting in an excellent rant about Existence and the The End**.

Modern American Seniors have their own opinions, however, on what The Bard of Avon was really referring to: actual loss of sleep. It is odd how William makes “the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” seem so dramatic when all we really hear is there is too much going on to get some, good, solid, long-time sleep. There are no “slings and arrows” flying across our bedrooms*** but there is a lot of cerebral activity. So much activity the poor brain stands as if in the doorway of the bedroom, ready to flick the light switch off but…can’t..do…it.

A thought racing across our brain cells IS sometimes the knowledge we can put ourselves “to sleep perchance to dream” in a very real and permanent way but we’re just not ready yet, so…

Instead we ponder the Cognitive Impairment conundrum: how it creeps up on us and when we have it, we won’t know, even as we wonder who put our car keys in the produce drawer of the refrigerator.

Or we wonder why we feel so good but still can’t generate enough interest in a late dinner at our favorite restaurant to get us out of our favorite chair.

And is there anyone who will listen to us and invent easy-on, easy-off socks?

Even worse: is there anyone who will listen to us at all?

The night then becomes a debate between…what was I talking about?

Oh, yes, how hard it is to sleep the good sleep, anymore. Most nights start well, even when the Yankees lose. But after the first few hours of sleep, when the first bathroom “break” wakes us with an unnecessary urgency, and shortly after we check the refrigerator for the perfect, healthy snack that won’t harm our brushed teeth or sensitive digestion system, it is the re-falling back asleep that fails, utterly****.

After the many nights this happens it is clearly no longer about slings and arrows or The End, but a thought all its own that consumes one: will I ever get back to sleep? The question is accompanied by the close observation and analysis of anything that comes to mind from the macro, like our current high inflation, to the micro: will I be warm enough without socks?

Running out pf space, as usual, but when your own brain becomes your own sleep disrupter…well, I never remember that happening as a young man.

Hmm. Is that because of a bad memory, it never happened, or Cognitive Decline?

Let me sleep on it.

*Probably. Or he may not have. Or someone else did. A guy named Bacon. Or an alien.

**Most Americans probably can recite this speech by simply muttering every short, trite saying they’ve heard about Shakespeare. To be or not to be. Whether tis nobler.  To sleep, etc…oh, and “the tyranny of life”.

***Or any of the other areas we may try to get (eye) closure.

****Wonderfully guttural word. And, yes, that is how I found my keys.

*****In upstate NY the temperatures change fast. A semi-nude, 80 degree outside sleep session can be sadly ended when the toes warn your body the early-morning outside temperature has dropped to 60. Socks, again?

Accentuating The Positive

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A friend recently congratulated me for getting back to “normal”, and “improving” after the years with The Calamities. The quoted words angered me. Though it wasn’t her fault, I launched into a text rant so interesting, honest, and cruel it scared me. She was only trying to be positive but…

The words are the problem. The message, not the messenger, so I apologized and hoped The Rant did not affect her own senior mental state. For me, it was cathartic to finally be able to verbalize one of the many cloudy issues plaguing Old Age: we age physically faster than we age mentally, at least most of us do. There are anecdotes of early onset cognitive impairment, but for most of us getting old is a lot like long, birth labor or “failure to progress”. A part of our existence, the mind, is not at the stage of life the body is, so…

Many of us are still the quarterback of our high school football team well into midlife. Or for a female symbol: Carrie Bradshaw.* My personal manly physical prowess was consistently overestimated** well into my 50s. Minor honest efforts were made to retain that prowess, but age adds a sliding, disconnect between what we do and what we think we have done and the gap separating the two gets larger each season.

Suddenly, and for a reason we tell ourselves we don’t understand, we look in a mirror one day and see the body of someone else.

It is shocking, but our minds still allow for some wiggle room: even when we buy all new pants, we still think we’ve got “It”, and will lose the weight.

Back to The Rant and my friend. Her words incited The Brain to find a way to explain the real “progress” aging means to the rest of my body including both Inner and Outer Voices: once we pass a certain age, we NEVER “improve” and the “normal” changes daily, and not in a good way. Every element of my existence is thankful for the instruction.

We can still have moments of physical, mental, and spiritual clarity leading to contentment and possible satisfaction with life, but we will never be what we were, ever again. It is what it is and we are what we are at each and every age. And the age we accept that realization is different for each of us, with some never accepting it at all.

When we are young, each mile of the race is faster, even as we go up the hill, then we hit the top and start down that long, knee-pounding decline to the last mile, and finally, The End. “Improving”? “Normal”?

We can work with normal. In fact, it has a measurable component in sports. If you run those miles*** you know how long it takes from the first step to the last. If you’ve kept a record, you could use Ai to plot a graph or chart. It’s amazing how clear life is when you see your run times charted and that physical hill appears on the graph. Up, up up, then down, down, down. Life.

So where is the positive? First, at least you were able to do things, great things, normal things, and things you loved. Never forget that bit. Second, the disconnect between what we feel we are and what we really are is finally understood late in life, especially by those who pay attention. The Wisdom we used to hear about when we were young. And even as you run your race slower and steadier, there may be times you can let loose, and get close to your best time for at least a few yards…

But improvement and normal have to be flexible and on your own terms. Carpe linguam and change the narrative.

*Younger women and men will need to Ai the name. Or not care to know.

**Not a good word for it since there was no conscious thought of my “estimation”: I simply knew I was still in great physical shape, inconvenient truths be damned. Ora at least ignored.

***Or swim those laps. Or bike those roads. Or complete those marathons…et.al…

Happiness or Contentment?

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A recent conversation at our early morning Turning Stone Resort and Casino Fitness Center Meeting sparked an interesting idea: would you rather be happy or content?*

You can’t answer if you don’t know the difference between the two. You can google or Ai both words on your own time, but it’s worth noting “contentment’s” etymology: “From the Middle English ‘contentement’, satisfaction of a claim or debt.” Did you think being content had anything to do with financial stuff?

Jury’s out, but let’s look at examples.

I was the first to the meeting and as I sat on the couch in front of the fireplace in the beautiful entrance hall, it occurred to me I was content. I was pain-free, did not lose any money in the morning’s gambling, was waiting for friends, and had no current life-threatening medical issues. The fireplace makes navel contemplation easy and contentment was the result of a contemplation free of issues, free of doubt, free of discomfort. And it was warm. And friends were coming to join me. It was a time for a clear mind to get out of the way and just bask in the glow from both the fire and the “satisfaction of a claim or debt”.

Minutes earlier on the gambling floor, I had won big on a favorite machine. ** As the “one-armed bandit” ramped up its big-payout bells and whistles and sirens, I was happy. Out of this world happy. How much would I win? Could I take a trip to the Bahamas?

Eh. Not the Bahamas but as noted earlier, the win was an integral component of the ensuing contentment. It wasn’t The Big Win, but it wasn’t a loss. It was enough to not spoil the morning but not enough to change a life.

I’m a big fan of contentment but wouldn’t kick happiness out of bed for eating crackers, if you’ll pardon the immature, misogynistic comment. It appears contentment is also “trainable”. You can teach it to sit and stay, for example.*** Contentment is like fruit on a tree, it’s there anytime you want it if know how to get it. It might even be shareable(sic) with a close friend or someone in need.

Happiness seems to involve luck. Serendipity. Being in the right place at the right time and—again—being able to recognize it ****. And as my machine blared my success earlier this morning, a look around the gambling floor revealed faces not exactly happy with my happiness. They may even have been harboring bad thoughts, or hoping my final amount would not be enough to make me too happy.

One thing noted as this essay unfolded: contentment is readily available if we notice it and cultivate it. We can get it anytime. It’s like a small, ocean-rounded rock you put in your pocket.

Happines? Not so much, it is mercurial, it comes and goes on the whims and impulses of The Gods.

Can they exist together? No. Happiness can help cause contentment, and contentment—probably—can help inspire or attract happiness, but only contentment is a life-changer: once you know to find it, the world is your oyster…most of the time.

And if you can’t find contentment now, be patient. Wait. It might be around the next corner…lurking…waiting for you to say hi.

*Spoiler alert: don’t read this footnote first cause happiness is sometimes defined as a feeling of contentment, and this essay is attempting to reduce confusion, not add to it.

**As a 50-cent per play bettor, winning $5.50 is a “big win”. In Trump math it’s about 1,000%.

***Still working on “fetch” and “roll over”.

****Ever wonder how lucky you are to NOT be in a place at the Wrong time? Ever drive by an accident and Thank God you were not in that exact spot 5 minutes earlier?

Addiction: a Good Thing?

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A study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry in February (2026) found that “a person’s spiritual belief or a steady religious practice had a protective effect from addiction.”

It’s hard for the unaddicted (sic) to understand the addicted. But that’s because us unaddicted only see addiction in relation to bad things, like drugs, sex, alcohol, gambling. It gives addiction a type of stigma it probably shouldn’t have and doesn’t deserve. Why? Ai describes addiction as “a chronic condition influenced by genetics, environment, and life experiences. It is characterized by the compulsive use of a substance or engagement in behavior despite harmful consequences.”

And more, from Ai: “The word has its roots in the Latin word, ‘addictus’…which means ‘to deliver’, ‘to yield’, or ‘to devote’.” Anyone see religious tones in this old word? Not yet? Per Ai, the Romans had a “legal process called addictio” where a person who could not pay their debts was “given over” or “assigned” by a judge to their creditor, “and literally became a slave to the person owed the money.” This process resulted in “the addicted” being essentially a slave to his or her new “owner”.

The Roman “legal” addiction sounds bad, but can there be anything bad about being addicted to a God? Jesus? Healthy eating? Exercise? Especially if that addiction keeps us from the common destructive addictions of our modern world? Perhaps our modern “addiction” should be redefined by context and results instead of past experience and harmful consequence. Yes, religious addiction can have “harmful consequences” when it turns into zealotry and fanaticism, but at least it won’t rot your teeth.

The Journal Article does not distinguish between Spiritual Addiction and the regular, researched Medical Addiction. Why not? It’s clear religious people “yield” and “devote” so is it possible intent makes a difference? Does anyone take up a drug with the intent to become addicted? And no one unintentionally “stumbles” into a spiritual addiction, unless they had existing psychological problems, right? That last sentence is loaded, isn’t it. Is it saying you can’t have spiritual faith unless you already have psychological problems?

Would it even be a nicer world if everyone were simply addicted to religion?

Maybe, but one of the hardest parts about religion is the question of “Which One?” Sharia Law in the Muslim world, for example, is heaven to some and hell to others of that very faith, let alone infidels. And Christians did burn witches at the stake in the OG.*

By the way, Ai “Sharia Law” for its literal Arabic translation.

Friends of mine recently discussed religion, Karl Marx’s “The Opium of The People”, and how organized religion influenced the World. The Crusades, Sharia Law, Sin, and redemption were the themes this past Easter. We did not try to put a number on how many people have died from being addicted to the wrong religion for the time or society in which they lived.

Addiction, then, is it good or bad? Healthy or unhealthy? Productive, life-affirming, or destructive and life-threatening?

Like everything else in our Dichotomous Universe (Old Testament, New Testament?), life is what we make it. Choose your addictions carefully.**

*OG: The Old, Good days? OG, per Ai, comes from the hip-hop “Original Gangster” and overtime morphed into “Old School”, or “Old Days”. Yes, it still fits. Those witch burning Christians were probably the Original Gangsters.

**Yes, you can have more than one. Who knew?