You’re excited about your family’s upcoming vacation in Florida. You reach out to Joe, your travel agent, to review potential options of things to do, and he recommends that you spend a day at this new amusement park, Marvel Mystery.

“So tell me more about it,” you say.

“Oh, you will all love it! It begins with this one ride, just as you enter. It is such a delight. Then there’s this other ride, and this one too. Adventure, water, magic, action! You’ll all have such a great time all through the morning!”

“That’s great! And then after that? What about the rest of the day?” you ask.

“Then you can have a great lunch at their buffet restaurant. Next you’ll want to go to this show they do in the afternoon, and then to this new section for these three nature rides which will keep you busy and so happy as a family all the way till your final hour.”

“The final hour. Tell me what that will be like.”

“Uh, the final hour. Let’s not worry about it. Overall, you’ll have such a great time!” Joe remarks.

You’re a bit confused. “What do you mean, ‘not worry about it’?”

“I mean let’s not fret about that last hour. The rest of your time will be so magical!” Joe says in earnest, wanting to close the deal.

“I don’t care about the rest of our time, Joe! I need to know what happens in that last hour of our day there!” you exclaim.

“Well, if you really want to know,” says Joe, his voice softer now, “you and your family might get separated from one another. That’s just the way it is, in that last hour there. One of you might be made to go to one side of the park, and one to another. One may be let out of the park early.”

Now you’re really curious and concerned. You lean onto his desk. “Joe, come straight with me. What happens in that last hour?”

“Yeah, well, there won’t be any joy rides or lights or anything. That last ride you’ll take might even be very dull and painful in some ways.”

“Oh.” You’re starting to get concerned.

“Hey! Don’t worry about it! It’s just the last hour. The whole day will be so much fun! It’ll be such a great time — the morning, the lunch, the afternoon. The deprivations of that last hour are going to be so far away from your mind for most of the day! So can I book this day at Marvel Mystery Park for you all?”

“Joe,” you say, “you’re crazy. There’s no way I want to take my family to a park where the experience ends in this way! What’s the point of having all those fun rides and good food if we have to end up in this tormented last hour with no real fun? I want to end it with fireworks, parades, laughter!”

This amusement park we’re speaking about is your life. The last hour is the last few years of your life, if you live to be 80 or 90 or 100 or more.

As we move into that final “hour”, we are likely going to have to cope with a lot of things being taken away from us. We may be far from the social limelight, dispossessed of our professional identity, more limited in our physical faculties and our ability to relish sensory pleasures, and having to cope with the loss of loved ones. That’s simply nature’s way.

If you’d never want to go to an amusement park that culminates in a rather dull, depressing, perhaps even dark final hour, why would you and I want to live our life in a way that gives us a whole lot of amusement for a while but then thrusts us into a funereal mood when all the joy rides are taken away from us in our final years?

There’s so much buzz today about the science and pursuit of happiness — but what we should really be after is the science and pursuit of everlasting happiness, or at least, lasting happiness that will last us all the way into our final years, and final moments. So that even when much is taken away from us materially, we still find a path to experiencing fireworks, parades and laughter, all the way to our final breath.

What might that path be? If it truly has to be independent of how bountiful the outer conditions of our life are in that phase — whether or not a loved one is with us in those years, or how much we can travel or socialize or enjoy the different foods we are fond of today — then this needs to be, mostly, an inner path. Where we feel a great sense of gratitude for all we’ve experienced in life, appreciative of the smallest and subtlest of everyday blessings, inspired to do whatever is in our power to manifest beauty and grace, and moved to offer small gifts of service to the people around us, even simple gestures like a warm smile or words of affirmation. And perhaps, just perhaps, where we burrow a tunnel all the way to our Core to drink from an inexhaustible fountain of joy that flows from within as we look forward with wonderment at what lies beyond the portal of mortal death.

There is some great research emerging on this topic of long-lasting happiness. My friend Arthur Brooks has written some wonderful pieces on it, including the book From Strength to Strength, and this article in Atlantic Monthly. One clue to long-lasting happiness is being in nurturing, long-lasting relationships.

If any of us were to believe, “Ah, I will deal with it when I get there, when it is my final years in the amusement park of life. I’ll make the right choice then, to go down this right path” then we would be deluding ourselves. Because who we are when we are 80, 90, or 100 is the culmination of the habits of mind we have cultivated and the nourishment or punishment our body has experienced over the years.

We will discuss what we’re doing to nurture our physical health in a future newsletter, so for now, let me ask you this:

Are the habits of mind you are engaging in today creating the conditions for lasting happiness, all the way through to your life’s final lap?

Warmly,
Hitendra

Note: The author of this story is Louise Dickinson Rich, and it was originally published in A 3rd Serving of Chicken Soup for the Soul.

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