Joyspan – Rethinking Age and Contentment

Growing old in our culture has often been associated with pain, suffering, and even humiliation. At best, we learn to manage the pain and, rather than face outright dismissal, we are tolerated—granted a certain leniency for moving and thinking more slowly, for our moments of forgetfulness.

Modern medicine and research have given us the ability to live longer—sometimes a full generation longer than our ancestors. But a longer lifespan isn’t necessarily better if our health is poor. Increasingly, attention has shifted toward health span: living a longer life in relatively good health.

Yet even good health and longevity don’t mean much if you don’t like your life as an older person. Thanks to my friend and 3oldguys.com subscriber, Leo, I was introduced to a crucial concept for addressing this challenge. It’s called Joyspan. Author Dr. Kerry Burnight coined this term to describe the missing ingredient in creating and maintaining a sense of joy later in life. Leo came across Joyspan in a New York Times article by journalist Jancee Dunn, who explored how to cultivate this enduring sense of well-being.

According to Dr. Burnight, “Joyspan is the experience of well-being and satisfaction in longevity.” She is quick to note that joy is not the same as happiness. Happiness tends to be a roller coaster—bursts of pleasure followed by inevitable dips until the next high comes along. Joy, on the other hand, is steadier and more deeply rooted. It’s embedded in our state of being. Cultivating Joyspan, therefore, is less about chasing happiness and more about nurturing contentment and satisfaction in daily life.

I recently listened to a newscast about the “happiest” country in the world—Finland. One of the interviewees, a philosopher and professor whose name escapes me, suggested that what makes Finns so “happy” is not euphoria but rather a deep sense of contentment and cultural comfort. It immediately reminded me of Joyspan.

In Dunn’s article, “Is Joyspan the Key to Aging Well?” she lists practical, nonnegotiable choices we can make daily to enhance our quality of life—no matter our age or health:

• Grow – Stay curious and open to learning.
  
• Adapt – Instead of mourning what we once could do, adjust to what we can do now.
  
• Give – Use your skills, strengths, or interests to help others, no matter how small the act.
  
• Connect – Maintain social connections; they are vital to physical and mental well-being.
  

The article goes further, offering ways to make these practices manageable through simple, meaningful actions. I might add that we “old guys” wrote about one of these choices—adaptation—in our June 30, 2024 post, “Life in the Slow Lane,” from which I’ll borrow a closing quote.

Naturally, each of us will respond to the concept of Joyspan differently. Some may see it as a repackaging of familiar wisdom. Others, like Leo, will want to expand on it—he suggests adding a fifth step: clean eating and regular exercise.

For me, the value lies in realizing that our relentless pursuit of constant happiness may actually undermine the very peace we seek. Perhaps the real magic is found in acceptance, contentment, and satisfaction—with who we are and how we choose to live.

“It’s not a question of how old you are, but how you are old.

-Jules Renard

The Joy of Small Things

I think joyspan is a useful concept, even though it drags along a bit of pop psychology in its wake. Young or old, living a joyful life is a goal we strive to achieve. Just check out the number of books with Joy in the title: Little Book of Joy, The Book of Joy (many variants with same title), Joy of Cooking, Joy of Sex, The Joys of Compounding, Joy of Movement, Finding Joy, Choose Joy, I Choose Joy,  The Joy of Living, The Call to Joy, The Living Waters of Joy, Unwrapping the Presence of Joy, and so on. There is even a website regaling the “joy of Satan”! Yikes!

So, joy is where you find it, I guess and maybe that’s the point: you have to be open to the possibility of joy.  We seniors have taken years to find our groove and there is a temptation is to narrow the choices we make. It is easy to lose that suppleness of mind and spirit we had as youngsters. 

After we three old guys discussed the concept of joyspan a bit more, I think the consensus was that one must cultivate a practice of openness and willingness to adapt. That is what allows a person to get the largest measure of joy out of daily life. Joyspan provides a reminder to embrace your daily path. Hen would also suggest acceptance and contentment – I would add ‘engagement’ to the mix. 

There also seems to be an effort to distinguish joy from happiness. Joy is long lasting, happiness is short-lived; joy is internal, happiness is external.  I appreciate Talmudic scholarship, but I’m not sure it is worth it to tease these concepts apart. Perhaps joy is celebrating lots of little happinesses?

Yet, I’m a dour sort. I don’t believe that we were put on earth simply to be happy – at least not all the time. Point in fact, I have not seen any book title called The Joy of Colonoscopy. Most of the time I just find myself stumbling into joy. Most of the time, it is a simple event.

One such recent experience involved a sandwich. All summer I had been thinking about a nice BLT, without the B & L. Yes, a simple tomato sandwich. I love tomatoes and the smell of tomato leaves in the garden.  Finally, we lined up all the ingredients: a solid beefsteak tomato, mayonnaise, pepper, and toasted Heidelberg rye. It was glorious! I felt like I had summer and sunlight in my mouth. What a rush of endorphins. This sandwich turned my routine day into one of limitless opportunity and optimism — but why? It seemed like an outsized reaction to such a small thing. In passing I wondered why I felt so joyful, but my custom is not to overthink good times. Experiencing joy is a gift. The key is to recognize those gifts. 

What small things bring you joy?

Glass Half Full/Glass Half Empty

Joy Span is a concept I never thought about before until Hen brought it up as a topic.  There are things that make me happy all the time, laughter is a cure for a lot of what ails us.  But now thinking about it, and reading Wally’s essay, I realize that Happiness is temporal.  It makes you feel good while something is happening, but dissipates as the experience passes.  Joy hangs around forever and may not cause laughter but rather a warmth that radiates through your entire body.  And along with that feeling throughout your body, it can bring a warm smile to your face, probably without teeth showing.  Reflection often occurs with it because more often than not, the feeling of joy brings back memories of times before when you experienced the same feelings.  Never having put much thought into it before, this brought me to the point where I had to reflect on what kinds of things do I have in my Joy Span.  I suspect that my life experiences mixed up the two feelings and never consciously separated joy from happiness.  Both made me feel good and what I believed to be happiness.

Now after thinking about this concept, I realized that Joy comes into our lives in many different forms.  It can sneak in quietly from external sources. Something happening around you, in your neighborhood or within your own family that may not have caused any kind of reaction while it happened but upon reflection made a sense of wellbeing in you hours later.  It might not have been funny at all.  Pride can be a source of Joy!  Something you have accomplished in your life that you are proud of can be the source.  For me I think this is the kind of Joy I have experienced.  My career teaching little kids is a great source of pride for me and the joy comes years later when I meet up with a former student and we share a lunch and talk about their lives as adults.  I am often in awe of what these “kids” have achieved and occasionally they even attribute part of their success to my having been their teacher.  That brings surges of Joy up in me. I have one former student who came to my room at a difficult time in her life when her parents were divorcing and she was struggling visibly.  Twenty years later we met for lunch and we talked about what her life is like now.  She became a teacher, then an administrator, went on to get her doctorate in education which isn’t unusual but took a great deal of perseverance on her part, and as if that weren’t enough she went on to get her hot air balloon pilot’s license.  That brought Joy to my life and still does just thinking about how she changed from that scared little 4th grader to this adventurous, intelligent professional woman who gives me credit for having had a positive influence in her life.  Just off the top of my head I can think of other sources of Joy, aside from my kids, there are my pets.  All my life I have had pets, always dogs and cats, often fish and birds as well.  Mostly my dogs have afforded me the Joy that only animals can bring to a person.  They love you in a way nothing else can, and mine have given me Joy my entire life.  As I am writing this I am realizing that I have had Joy Span for a long period of time and realize how fortunate I have been in my life.  

Now, not to disappoint my fellow bloggers, and to maintain my image of glass half empty, during this period of revelation, it made me wonder if one can experience Joy without experiencing sadness or hardship.  Without these things how would we be able to tell what Joy is? In my life I certainly experienced hard times, things I was ashamed of, struggling with who i was and pretending to be someone I wasn’t.  Those were shameful times.  Shame is another one of those anti Joy words.  Loneliness belongs in that group as well and so does anger.  I can get angry at myself very easily, for saying something or for not saying something that needed to be said or never should have been said!.  It is the comparison between Joy and Sadness that allows the Joy to stand out and last over the years.  Sadness eases over time and stays with you but you don’t have to let it out of its cage it you don’t want it.  Joy has a way of seeping out when you least expect it and allows you to sit back, feel the warmth, and let that toothless smile form on your face.

Now here is the dilemma I face.  The future!  Currently, I am experiencing a period of serious loneliness. I have never lived alone before, and it is too bad it happened when my mind and body are less resilient than in the past. Some nights around 3AM I wake up and I go into my living room and stand in front of my big bow window and look out over the world and wonder what the neighbors feel when they waken during the night.  It is troubling for me, luckily my dog is by my side as he always is and I can confide in him.  But since we discussed this topic during our weekly meetings, I have noticed a few things or perhaps remembered a few things.  One afternoon I was sitting in my living room, having a nice glass of Malbec. My living room has windows on 2 sides and the dining room which is open to the living room has windows on the two other sides and the light streaming in through those windows and my big bow window to the world brought in the most incredible natural light I have ever seen.  Between feeling the warmth of the sun on my back and the visual light show which brought many of my paintings to life I experienced that warm feeling throughout my body, I leaned back into the couch and felt that toothless smile come over my face and damn if that wasn’t Joy I don’t know what is.  And i can always go back and draw that moment up in my mind whenever I want.  And i realized there are many more examples as simple or as complex as that moment for me to draw from.  I am hoping now with this reference point that however long my body holds out I will live it out in Joy Span