“Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” … It is therefore primarily by her conduct and by her life that the Church will evangelize the world, in other words, by her living witness of fidelity to the Lord Jesus – the witness of poverty and detachment, of freedom in the face of the powers of this world, in short, the witness of sanctity.
by Clare Watson, punlished in Science Alert
Aging is inevitable, but on a cellular level, it’s also malleable – known to accelerate during pregnancy and times of stress, yet reversibly so.
However, the way our bodies feel or function is different to how people view us; how old they think we look.
Judgmental? Possibly. But also, kind of accurate: Research shows that estimating someone’s age just by looking at them can predict their overall health fairly well, as can shaking their hand.
But expressing those views might also have serious psychological impacts for people on the receiving end of ageist comments, both positive or negative, with ramifications for their physical health. Our own perceptions of aging could also influence how we grow old too.
That’s according to a new study from University of Oklahoma health scientist Julie Ober Allen and colleagues, who used data on 2,006 US adults aged 50 to 80 years old from a 2019 national survey on healthy aging.
The participants were polled on how young or old they thought they looked relative to their peers, and whether they experienced any age-related discrimination or positivity in the form of compliments or being asked for pearls of wisdom or advice.
While 59 percent of people thought they looked younger than their peers, only 6 percent admitted they looked older than people of the same age.
So, most of us tend to think we look more sprightly than we really are, regardless of our ethnicity. Whether or not other people agreed wasn’t part of the study; it had no external measures of aging.
Compared to men, more women thought they looked younger than their peers but they also tended to spend more time and money than men trying to look younger, if they could afford it.
But investing precious time and hard-earned money on looking youthful, as one-third of participants did, didn’t always repel negative comments or stereotypes of aging for either sex. These people reported experiencing ageism, such as negative assumptions about their ability to see, hear, or use technology, as well as receiving positive affirmations about their age – and all that effort may have come at a personal cost.
“Perhaps those who tried and succeeded in looking younger experienced less discrimination,” says Allen. “However, those same individuals may have also felt more anxious and uncomfortable with their aging appearance.”
Somewhat expected, the study did find that people who reported receiving more positive age-related comments were also more likely to report being in better physical and mental health.
On the flip side, those who weathered discrimination or negative remarks tended to say they had poorer health, both mentally and physically. That’s concerning because society’s pervasive bias against older adults – which shamefully, is still socially acceptable in many ways – could feed a vicious cycle that sees older people slide into poorer health that makes them age faster.
“Feelings and experiences of ageism, which are rooted in our society’s emphasis on youthfulness and bias against aging, appear to indirectly have a relationship with health, both mental and physical,” says Allen.
It’s worth noting that the study only looked at US adults, and while participants did represent various ethnic groups, other cultures or countries may have different perceptions or values of aging.
Psychologists encourage people to reframe their own attitudes toward aging because research shows that older adults with positive self-perceptions of aging live longer.
Rather than getting hung up on age, people would also do better focusing on what they can do to improve their health such as moving more, eating better, and smoking and drinking less.
“We should be emphasizing healthy behaviors, many of which have implications for aging and appearance,” Allen says. “If you exercise, maintain a healthy weight and don’t smoke, you will look younger as you age.”
The study has been published in Psychology and Aging.
by Mark Manson
f you have to try to be cool, you will never be cool. If you have to try to be happy, then you will never be happy. People these days are just trying too hard.
When you’re raging pissed and throwing a socket wrench at the neighbor’s kids, you are not self-conscious about your state of anger. You are not thinking, “Am I finally angry? Am I doing this right?” No, you’re out for blood. You inhabit and live the anger. You are the anger.
And then it’s gone. Hopefully before the cops arrive.
Happiness, like other emotions, is not something you obtain, but rather something you inhabit. It is temporary1. Always.
What this implies is that finding happiness is not achieved in itself, but rather it is the side effect of a particular set of ongoing life experiences. This gets mixed up a lot, especially since happiness is marketed so much these days as a goal in and of itself. Buy X and be happy. Learn Y and be happy. But you can’t buy happiness and you can’t achieve happiness. It just is—once you get other parts of your life in order.
Tony Montana didn’t seem too happy.
When most people seek happiness, they are actually seeking pleasure: good food, more sex, more time for TV and movies, a new car, parties with friends, full body massages, losing 10 pounds, becoming more popular, and so on.
But while pleasure is great, it’s not the same as happiness2. Pleasure is correlated with happiness but does not cause it. Ask any drug addict how their pursuit of pleasure turned out. Ask an adulterer who shattered her family and lost her children whether pleasure ultimately made her happy. Ask a man who almost ate himself to death how happy pursuing pleasure made him feel.
Pleasure is a false god. Research shows that people who focus their energy on materialistic and superficial pleasures end up more anxious, more emotionally unstable and less happy in the long-run3. Pleasure is the most superficial form of life satisfaction and therefore the easiest. Pleasure is what’s marketed to us. It’s what we fixate on. It’s what we use to numb and distract ourselves. But pleasure, while necessary, isn’t sufficient4. There’s something more.
A popular narrative lately is that people are becoming unhappier because we’re all narcissistic and grew up being told that we’re special unique snowflakes who are going to change the world and we have Facebook constantly telling us how amazing everyone else’s lives are, but not our own, so we all feel like crap and wonder where it all went wrong. Oh, and all of this happens by the age of 23.
Sorry, but no. Give people a bit more credit than that.
For instance, a friend of mine recently started a high-risk business venture. He dried up most of his savings trying to make it work and failed. Today, he’s happier than ever for his experience. It taught him many lessons about what he wanted and didn’t want in life and it eventually led him to his current job, which he loves. He’s able to look back and be proud that he went for it because otherwise, he would have always wondered “what if?” and that would have made him unhappier than any failure would have.
The failure to meet our own expectations is not antithetical to happiness, and I’d actually argue that the ability to fail and still appreciate the experience is actually a fundamental building block for happiness5,6.
If you thought you were going to make $100,000 and drive a Porsche immediately out of college, then your standards of success were skewed and superficial, you confused your pleasure for happiness, and the painful smack of reality hitting you in the face will be one of the best lessons life ever gives you.
The “lower expectations” argument falls victim to the same old mindset: that happiness is derived from without. The joy of life is not having a $100,000 salary. It’s working to reach a $100,000 salary, and then working for a $200,000 salary, and so on.
So, I say raise your expectations. Elongate your process. Lay on your death bed with a to-do list a mile long and smile at the infinite opportunity granted to you. Create ridiculous standards for yourself and then savor the inevitable failure. Learn from it. Live it. Let the ground crack and rocks crumble around you because that’s how something amazing grows, through the cracks.
Chances are you know someone who always appears to be insanely happy regardless of the circumstances or situation. Chances are this is actually one of the most dysfunctional people you know. Denying negative emotions leads to deeper and more prolonged negative emotions and emotional dysfunction.
It’s a simple reality: shit happens. Things go wrong. People upset us. Mistakes are made and negative emotions arise. And that’s fine. Negative emotions are necessary and healthy for maintaining a stable baseline happiness in one’s life.
The trick with negative emotions is to 1) express them in a socially acceptable and healthy manner and 2) express them in a way which aligns with your values.
Simple example: A value of mine is to pursue non-violence. Therefore, when I get mad at somebody, I express that anger, but I also make a point to not punch them in the face. Radical idea, I know. (But I absolutely will throw a socket wrench at the neighbor’s kids. Try me.)
There’s a lot of people out there who subscribe to the “always be positive” ideology. These people should be avoided just as much as someone who thinks the world is an endless pile of shit. If your standard of happiness is that you’re always happy, no matter what, then you need a reality check.
I think part of the allure of obsessive positivity is the way in which we’re marketed to. I think part of it is being subjected to happy, smiley people on television constantly. I think part of it is that some people in the self-help industry want you to feel like there’s something wrong with you all the time.
Or maybe it’s just that we’re lazy, and like anything else, we want the result without actually having to do the hard work for it.
Which brings me to what actually drives happiness….
Completing a marathon makes us happier than eating a chocolate cake. Raising a child makes us happier than beating a video game. Starting a small business with friends and struggling to make money makes us happier than buying a new computer.
And the funny thing is that all three of the activities above are exceedingly unpleasant and require setting high expectations and potentially failing to always meet them. Yet, they are some of the most meaningful moments and activities of our lives. They involve pain, struggle, even anger and despair, yet once we’ve done them we look back and get misty-eyed about them.
Why?
Because it’s these sorts of activities that allow us to become our ideal selves. It’s the perpetual pursuit of fulfilling our ideal selves that grants us happiness, regardless of superficial pleasures or pain, regardless of positive or negative emotions. This is why some people are happy in war and others are sad at weddings. It’s why some are excited to work and others hate parties. The traits they’re inhabiting don’t align with their ideal selves.
The end results don’t define our ideal selves. It’s not finishing the marathon that makes us happy; it’s achieving a difficult long-term goalthat does. It’s not having an awesome kid to show off that makes us happy; it’s knowing that you gave yourself up to the growth of another human being that is special. It’s not the prestige and money from the new business that makes you happy, it’s the process of overcoming all odds with people you care about.
And this is the reason that trying to be happy inevitably will make you unhappy. Because to try to be happy implies that you are not already inhabiting your ideal self, you are not aligned with the qualities of who you wish to be. After all, if you were acting out your ideal self, then you wouldn’t feel the need to try to be happy.
Cue statements about “finding happiness within,” and “knowing that you’re enough.” It’s not that happiness itself is in you, it’s that happiness occurs when you decide to pursue what’s in you.
And this is why happiness is so fleeting. Anyone who has set out major life goals for themselves only to achieve them and realize that they feel the same relative amounts of happiness/unhappiness knows that happiness always feels like it’s around the corner, just waiting for you to show up. No matter where you are in life, you will always perceive there to be one more thing you need to do to be especially happy7. But it too, will be a mirage.
And that’s because our ideal self is always just around that corner, always three steps ahead of us. We dream of being a musician and when we’re a musician, we dream of writing a film score, and when write a film score, we dream of writing a screenplay. And what matters isn’t that we achieve each of these plateaus of success, but that we’re consistently moving towards them, day after day, month after month, year after year. The plateaus will come and go, and we’ll continue following our ideal self down the path of our lives.
And with that, with regards to finding happiness, it seems the best advice is also the simplest: Imagine who you want to be and then step towards it8. Dream big and then do something. Anything9. The simple act of moving at all will change how you feel about the entire process and serve to inspire you further.
Let go of the imagined result—it’s not necessary. The fantasy and the dream are merely tools to get you off your ass. It doesn’t matter if they come true or not. Live, man. Just live. Stop trying to be happy and just be.
by Br. Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M
We read Holy Scripture in order to learn God’s ways in His dealings with men, ways which invariably prove to be mysterious and baffling to our thoughts and expectations. Most especially do we find ourselves both challenged and bewildered by those events which took place between the glorious resurrection of Our Lord and His ascension into heaven forty days later.
Holy Scripture and tradition record ten distinct apparitions of the risen Jesus to various groups or individuals, but perhaps the most intriguing of them all is the apparition, on the very day of the Resurrection, to two disciples when they were on the way to Emmaus — a little village located seven or eight miles from Jerusalem. To this event Saint Mark makes a brief reference in his Gospel (Mark 16:12), but Saint Luke tells in vivid details the account of what actually took place.
“And behold, two of them went, the same day, to a town which was sixty furlongs from Jerusalem, named Emmaus. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass, that while they talked and reasoned with themselves, Jesus himself also drawing near, went with them. But their eyes were held, that they should not know him. And he said to them: What are these discourses that you hold one with another as you walk and are sad?” (Lu 24: 13-17)
From these words of Saint Luke we try to imagine two men on a long journey, walking along, when suddenly they find a third companion, as it were, another ordinary traveler, joining their conversation, and doing it so unobtrusively and so sweetly that they do not even notice the intrusion. And considering that the two were disciples of Our Lord, we feel certain that their failing to recognize Him must have been the effect of a divine dispensation, and could not be without a purpose. Naturally, therefore, we ask: What was the purpose?
As a matter of fact, many more burning questions begin to arise in our minds. Why in the whole wide world did He choose to appear to those two discouraged and tired travelers? And why in such a retired place? Why appear, and yet, as it were, stay hiding? Why all this reticence? Why not manifest the triumph of His divinity as conspicuously as He manifested the reality of His human nature by the public manner of His Crucifixion? In other words, why not blaze in the midst of the Holy City or on the pinnacle of the Temple, as He blazed on Mount Tabor, for all men to see and to be convinced?
But obviously this was not His way, and we must take Him as He reveals Himself. We cannot reconstitute Him from our preconceived ideas. For Jesus is absolutely unique, and there is nothing in our thoughts and experiences that even begins to anticipate what the God-Man is to do, or how He is to do it. So let us continue with the facts as given to us by Saint Luke:
“And he said to them: What are these discourses that you hold one with another as you walk, and are sad? And the one of them, whose name was Cleophas, answering, said to him: Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things that have been done there in these days? To whom he said: What things?” (Lu 24:1-19)
The two disciples at this point in time did not know who it was that was talking to them, but now that we know, we can only exclaim, in adorational bewilderment: And what a question! Of course, Jesus knew what they were discussing and why they were sad. But what could be the purpose of this approach? The scholars of our time, mostly disciples of higher criticism, throw no light on mysterious passages like this, for it takes more than critical scholarship to penetrate the enigmatic devices of love. We shall have Saint Bernard, in a moment, reveal to us what the Great Lover of souls was aiming at. But let us continue with Saint Luke for a while longer:
“To whom he said: What things? And they said: concerning Jesus of Nazareth….And how our chief priests and princes delivered him to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we hoped that it was he that should have redeemed Israel…Then he said to them: O foolish, and slow of heart to believe in all things which the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures the things that were concerning him. And they drew nigh to the town whither they were going: and he made as though he would go farther. But they constrained him, saying: Stay with us, because it is towards evening, and the day is now far spent. And he went in with them.” (Lu 24: 19-29)
So far, we have read the facts as given by Saint Luke, and we sigh, and wonder, and ask within ourselves: What does it all import? What means this feigning to go away? And this allowing Himself to be prevailed upon to stay? And if, as it seems, he had the intention all along to remain with them, why did He act as if it were their proposal, not His?
It is in such matters that we must go to the Church for enlightenment, and the Church sends us to those set up for us to be our exemplars and teachers: the Saints and the Doctors of the Church. Saint Bernard, from the depth of his meditations on the mysteries of Scripture, will give us many important clues. With such help, we find ourselves capable of understanding other mysterious parts of the Bible, as well as understanding much that is enigmatic in God’s dealings with us, whether in our own personal spiritual lives or in the general history of the Church.
“Perhaps,” answers Saint Bernard, “He withdrew Himself, that He might be recalled the more earnestly, and the more ardently retained. For thus He feigned to be going farther, not that He intended to do so, but so as to be invited to stay with that tender solicitation, ‘Stay with us, because it is toward evening, and the day is now far spent.’ (Luke 24:29). This kind of pious feint is rather a salutary dispensation of Providence, meant to exercise a truly devout soul. Passing by, He means to be stopped; going away, He is willing to be recalled: His departure is a dispensation of Providence; His return is ever the purpose of His will; and both are the effects of infinite wisdom, the great ends of which He alone can fathom.”
These are the words of Saint Bernard, shedding light on what the Saint calls a “dispensation of Providence,” and what earlier Fathers preferred to call the “Economy,” meaning by that term God’s government of the world in the interest of the salvation of souls. For God seeks souls by a kind of stratagem, wishing not so much to impose His truth, as to attract us to Himself; to be sought after, won over, and even prevailed upon. He reveals, in order that He may be, as it were, a discovery of love. Instead of flashing like a shooting star, His truth rather dawns like the morning. This keeps our faith free and meritorious. It also keeps our life on earth a decisive trial of fitness for the life of heaven.
But let us continue with Saint Luke’s narration:
“And it came to pass, whilst he was at table with them, he took bread and blessed, and broke, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight. And they said one to the other: Was not our heart burning within us, whilst he spoke in the way, and opened to us the scriptures?” (Luke 24: 30-32)
Every word is full of deep mystery, and how our own hearts would burn within us were He to walk also with us, and in like manner, to “open to us the scriptures”! For not only the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, but all believers on the way to heaven, need to have the Scriptures opened to them. This therefore is the fundamental prayer of the Church, and is fully answered for all those who persevere in faithful docility and seek the Church as a teacher.
One such faithful son of the Church, the great biblical scholar, Cornelius a Lapide (1567-1637), having sought the answers from the Saints and Doctors of the Church, has this to communicate to us of their collective wisdom. Commenting on the last episode we quoted from Saint Luke, he says:
“Verse 30. He took bread and blessed. He blessed it by causing it to become His body as in the consecration of the Eucharist.”
And after giving many excellent reasons for his Contention that Our Lord vanished mysteriously after having given Himself to the disciples in the consecrated Host, a Lapide concludes with the testimony of tradition, thus:
“Furthermore, this is the opinion of the great majority of the Fathers. So the author quoted by Saint Chrysostom says, ‘The Lord not only blessed the bread, but gave it with his own hand to Cleophas and his companion. But that which is given by His hand is not only sanctified, but is sanctification and the cause of sanctity to the recipient.’
“And Saint Augustine in his homily on this passage says: ‘How did the Lord will to make Himself known? By the breaking of bread. We are content then, that in the breaking of bread the Lord is made known to us. In no other way is it His will to reveal to Himself. Therefore, although we shall not see Him in bodily form, He has given us His flesh to eat.’”
This therefore is the testimony of a most competent authority on the general and traditional understanding of what actually took place at Emmaus on that first Easter Sunday. And we who seek to learn God’s ways in dealing with us are thus encouraged to draw a few spiritual conclusions, knowing that the Holy Ghost must mean to teach us, since He inspired Saint Luke to report with such care all those sacred events.
The first Easter Sunday was unquestionably the climax of Our Lord’s physical life on earth; the same day was also the beginning of His mystical life in the Church. Our Lord’s physical presence among men was terminated by His victory over death; His mystical presence will last to the end of time. And so as soon as He placed Himself sacramentally under the guise of the Eucharist, His physical presence vanished mysteriously from before the eyes of His disciples.
And it is now in the Sacrament of the Altar that we must recognize His presence, for it is in the same sacrament that He must continue to “walk with us in the way, and to open to us the Scriptures.”
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