The Ingredients of Happiness by Lucy Burdette

Author:Lucy Burdette [Burdette, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2023-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

Loneliness Can Be Fatal

Good close relationships seem to buffer us from some of the slings and arrows of getting old, says psychiatrist and Harvard professor Robert Waldinger. In other words, making close connections buffers the bad times and enhances the good.

From The Happiness Connection by Cooper Hunziker, PhD

I strode across the town green to the coffee shop that had begun to feel like the most welcoming place in an otherwise frosty world, and ordered a latte – with an extra shot of espresso this time. I was relieved to have some time to myself to sort through everything that had come at me fast and furious. The last few days had left my head and heart reeling.

‘We may have to put you on the payroll,’ said the girl behind the counter as she handed me the coffee. Her nose rings bristled as she smiled, a little bit like metallic whiskers. A comparison that I doubted she’d appreciate. ‘You log almost as much time here as I do.’

‘Not a bad idea,’ I said, smiling back. ‘Though, I’m afraid I’d gain fifty pounds just looking at those desserts every day.’

‘There are worse things in life than gaining a little weight from eating what you love,’ she said. ‘How is your class coming along?’

‘First session coming up soon. I’m working on not instantly boring them to death. I’ve heard Yalies can be tough.’

She winked. More bristling. ‘My generation has a short attention span. I blame this.’ She held up her phone. ‘Remember that underneath those confident, critical faces, most of them are a mess like the rest of us. And they are desperately afraid that someone will notice. Or maybe just as anxious for someone to figure it out.’ She shrugged and laughed. ‘But you don’t need my amateur analysis. I wonder if you’d be better off developing an app? Then you could text them instead of lecturing.’

‘Maybe so. That’s actually a good idea.’ I carried the mug back to a small table outside on the sidewalk this time, admiring how perceptive she was, but also wondering what in her psyche called out for such primitive decorations. Neither the nose, lip, and eyebrow piercings nor today’s streaks of pinkish hair did much to showcase her natural beauty. She needed to set herself apart, I figured. Declare to the world she wasn’t conventional, that she wasn’t what her family must have thought she was. Or expected her to be.

A premise I could relate to. Even before my father left home, my mother talked a lot about how the most important thing in my future was to get settled. Settled seemed to mean one thing: finding a reliable job plus a man who would take care of me, stick with me for a lifetime. Looking back, I suspected this was more a message for my father than for me, because who tells an eight-year-old she needs a man? I was the medium. Good men don’t leave their wives … my mother surely had been projecting. A lifetime sentence, my father must have thought.

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