Loving Life
I think I am settling into my retired life at long last. It’s only taken three years, but today is somehow different. When something good or bad happens on a given day, it’s fairly easy to comprehend why we might feel particularly good or bad overall. But when something noteworthy does NOT happen and you feel noticeably good or bad, that seems worthy of some reflection. I have long held and even discussed the opinion that I am blessed by having an excess of what I will call serotonin. I don’t know enough about endocrinology or brain chemistry to be more precise in that self-diagnosis, so I use the commonly known serotonin as the culprit for my optimistic outlook on life. But I have generally thought of that drug as something that drives my enthusiasm and gets me up in the morning feeling that I can accomplish whatever mountain needs climbing. Beyond that, I have always felt the need to say that I am in search of (rather than in possession of) a sense of peace that might lead to contentment.
I’m not sure I have ever juxtaposed optimism and contentment before, but it seems like a significant distinction to consider. Drive is to satisfaction like pride is to thankfulness, if that makes sense. I have always been driven and I have always had pride in my accomplishments, but I do not think of myself as possessing blind ambition or that I take myself so seriously that I let my pride completely override my humility or my conviction for fallibility. I’m starting to get that feeling of being self-serving in this analysis, but there is a point I’m trying to make. My serotonin that feeds my optimism does not seem to feed my contentment. I should probably research that brain chemistry issue further, but I suspect I will learn that the two feelings are driven by different endocrines.
When I wake up feeling like I can conquer the world, I do not bother to wonder why I feel that way, but just choose to run with it. When I sit in mid-afternoon feeling good, I take the time to ask the blessings that have given rise to my contentment. One is assumed and the other is unanticipated. One is only praised when I stand back far enough to reflect (like now), while the other is always in the moment a matter of reflection that cannot proceed without acknowledgement to the higher powers of good fortune. Wow, that’s quite a lot to get my head around and today it seems to have gone the next step of me simply feeling good in the afternoon without the benefit of accomplishment, good news or any other conscious external outcome to make me feel content. I suppose I should acknowledge that this sure beats waking up one morning feeling as though I was powerless and that the world was going to hell regardless of anything I thought or did. If I had to break form in one way, I’m glad it was in the direction of contentment.
This morning, I had a Zoom call with my life insurance agents of many years to discuss where we were financially. Despite having an extensive experience in the business of life insurance, I can never make heads or tails of the crazy premium billing notices they send and how to connect premium, dividend, cash value accrual and net insurance in any meaningful way…so instead, we talk every few yers. They updated me with the normal forward-looking spreadsheet that projected my life out to 100. Since I am trying to balance costs and coverage, it shows what I pay for how long to achieve the outcome I want. There was some satisfaction in updating myself but no news leading to any sense of pleasure or even reassurance, just simple awareness. After that was over, I went and had lunch while staring at 4 TVs with sports that I couldn’t care less about. It was a perfectly OK lunch, but food does little to excite me any more and I always leave more than I eat these days anyway. As I have noted, while I still eat more what I want than what I supposedly should, by nutritional standards, I eat more to live than live to eat (something I can’t claim has been the case for much of my life). Thank you Mr. Lapband. Then, after that adequate but not otherwise rewarding repast, I had my weekly two-hour massage that sounds like an indulgence, but which I consider a necessary routine prophylactic for my aches and pains. It seems I slept through most of it which was less about being loose and more about needing the rest, so thanks, but just another week of cramp-avoidance. That put me in the afternoon with little accomplishment per se to show for the day, but at least on track with some semblance of a weekly routine. And yet, I noted an extremely high level of contentment, which was confusing to me.
I sat in the cool air of the living room thinking that life was good. I can’t be certain, but that felt a lot like contentment. Perhaps that was even a case of being at true peace with myself. I had no agenda. I had no wins to feel spirited about. There was nothing I was immediately looking forward to (something I have usually carefully curated as part of my feel good program in life). But I was, momentarily and quite noticeably loving life. That, in the movie, is usually where the director has you step off a curb and get hit by a bus, right?
As much as I noticed that moment, it passed as I got distracted by my buddy Mike coming over to ask if I thought he had filled out some insurance beneficiary forms correctly. I told him he had come to the right place since I had spent much of the first half of the year filling out exactly such forms for three different insurance companies and that I had just been on the Zoom that day with two actuaries of yet another major insurer. I asked to see the underlying and controlling trust document, which he produced on his phone and noted in the first sentence that the answer to his question was right there in black and white. It was quick and easy and it led to me having the time to pontificate about how investment philosophy should be preached to the choir of the investment uninitiated. I saw Mike’s eyes visibly glaze over, so I let him go with the satisfaction that his forms were filled out correctly. This interaction was mildly satisfying for me (I was happy to be of service to Mike), but equally reminded me that the professorial side of me can be a huge bore if left unchecked. All that, but I still went back to loving life on the sofa.
Kim headed off for her choral rehearsal and I to my Grubhub order for dinner as I started the binge watching again of The Offer, flashing me back to NYC and Hollywood circa 1970 as Al Pacino was getting discovered and Francis Ford Coppola was getting his directorial shot while Charlie Bluhdorn played the corporate chieftain bad boy of his era. When I had binged as much as I could stand for one evening (Kim had returned and gone straight to bed), I did something I rarely do, I wandered out in the dark (the outdoor timed lighting had already shut down for the night) onto the deck. I stood there looking out over the dark but still hillside in the 70 degree still air and thought about how lucky I felt. In other words, that contentment was still with me. I then noticed that it was a full moon and wondered one last thought before heading off to peaceful rest…if the moon’s gravity can move ocean tides, is it strong enough to move the tide of human emotions?