About

Happier Older Wiser - A Community of Minds.


Happier Older Wiser - The acronym HOW came to me during one of my frequent ponderings on how to live life now that I was no longer completely immersed in a career - how to continue - how to achieve fulfilment - how to be productive.

Happier - When I examined my life more closely I realised that I was happier now than ever before - happiness when one is young is often intermittent and volatile whereas at this stage of life I am more consistently happy.  This happiness surges up frequently - when I view a beautiful scene, tree, flower,baby.  Laughing with my partner, reading a good book, enjoying the fire, it’s more than contentment it is a vital sense of being happy.

Older - well that’s a given isn’t it - nothing to be done about that except to accept the benefits of aging - such as happiness and wisdom and time to explore those interests that there was never enough time for before.  Somerset Maugham started learning Greek when he was eighty because he realised that ‘ now I have  all the time in the world’.

Wiser - I looked up a definition of wisdom in the Concise Oxford Dictionary,  ‘‘possession of experience and knowledge  together with the power of applying them critically or practically, sagacity, prudence, common sense.’ I had to laugh at that - I do agree with the first part of the definition and would add the ability to laugh at life, to accept that everyone is different, that my way is not necessarily the right way for everyone else.  But I don’t necessarily equate Wisdom with common sense or rather with being sensible.  Wiser I may be but silly I frequently am, I like to be silly, I like to be childlike, roll down a grass hill, laugh at nonsense rhymes, make ridiculous noises, dance like a dervish.  I have to be honest and admit I do none of these things while walking down the main street of my home town so perhaps there is an element of common sense after all.

When I retired we moved to a small town, a town I had always wanted to live in, and I am happy to be here. However I found it difficult to settle down to being retired, struggling with the feeling that I was being a dilettante, playing at life.  After a while I worked out that what I was missing was a Community of Minds, that feeling of being part a group of intelligent, interesting people with similar interests.

I wanted to start a blog to expand my life, the range of people I communicate with, my writing skills.  The internet is a marvellous tool for each of these.  There is a limit to how much travelling I can do, how many people I am likely to meet who will be on the same ‘wavelength’ as me,  who want to talk about books, philosophy, politics,  spirituality, the whole wonderful world of ideas.  So I decided to put myself out there and see how many likeminded people I could meet. That’s not to say people who think the same as me, just people who are prepared to think and discuss their thoughts!