The Effect of 6 Elderly New Yorkers on One Middle-Aged Reporter

ny times

For almost three years, my mother has been asking me the same question. Don’t I get depressed, she wants to know, talking to all those old people?

The short answer is no.

The slightly longer answer is that no work I have ever done has brought me as much joy and hope, or changed my outlook on life as profoundly. Even now, I am surprised to be writing those words.....

One day in his apartment, Fred Jones asked me my definition of happiness, then gave me his own. “Happiness to me is what’s happening now,” he said. The apartment, a cluttered wreck that was up two flights of stairs he could barely climb, was an unlikely place to look for happiness, and Mr. Jones, whose health was failing, was an unlikely spokesman. But he never dwelt on his problems. “If you’re not happy at the present time, then you’re not happy,” he said. “Some people say, if I get that new fur coat for the winter, or get myself a new automobile, I’ll be happy then. But you don’t know what’s going to happen by that time. Right now, are you happy?” Whenever I asked him the happiest time of his life, he said without hesitation, “Right now.”

The six became models for the challenges in my own life, living examples of resilience, gratitude and the wisdom that comes from living through ups and downs in history. Even amid the very real hardships of old age, all found reasons or opportunities to be happy.

In early 2016, I wrote the words “Happiness Is a Choice You Make” on a sheet of paper and taped it to the wall by my nightstand. It was Mr. Jones’s wisdom filtered through that of all the others. Right now, are you happy?

They were words to live by, at any age. Why not? In the rest of the year I wrote a book by that title, due out this month, with a subtitle giving credit where it is due: “Lessons from a year among the oldest old.” This time, I tell the story that is not in the Times series.

In some ways, the title is an answer to my mother’s question, and an homage to six people and one assignment that changed my life. The effects carried me through this year, as the daily maelstrom of current events roiled friends around me. No, I did not get depressed spending time with old people. I became more patient, less anxious, more capable of loving, less afraid of death and decline.

Which is to say, more like an old person. And grateful for it.