I recently picked up season one of “Men of a Certain Age.”
It’s a TNT show made by Ray Romano (Everybody loves Raymond). It’s about three best friends who are dealing with the realities of middle age. One character is a divorcee trying to work out his new relationship with his kids, another is a struggling actor trying to sustain an LA 20’s to 30’s lifestyle of expensive fun and cheap sex, and a third is a family-man with the usual family struggles – paying for a mortgage, losing weight, and maintaining a healthy marriage.
Apparently, the show got cancelled during season 2 so other people didn’t share my love for this show, but I did draw an interesting insight from the show:
“The grand essentials to happiness are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”
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I love this idea because it ties into my theory of multi-facetedness.
Sidenote - Back in college, my friend Amulya and I had this theory of the three pillars.
Primarily, we valued three things.
Athletics – I was a cross country and track runner in college, and Amulya was an ultimate Frisbee player, so a lot of our worth was determined by our current athletic success.
Academics – we were both pre-med Bio majors, so we were grade-conscious.
Adult women – we were girl crazy, so what.
Whenever we chatted, we’d assess our lives in terms of the pillars, talk about which pillar was the highest and doing the best, which we’d been neglecting to work on, and so on.
I’m not sure if the pillar imagery is the perfect metaphor, but our idea was that as long as we were doing well at athletics, academics, or adult women it would sustain our happiness.
Basically, my theory of multi-facetedness was about spreading your efforts out, and doing different things with your time.
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To go back to the quote:
“The grand essentials to happiness are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”
The reason I love this insight is because it takes this theory of multi-facetedness to another, more complicated level, and I love analyzing complicated life theories. Not only do you need to do different things, they need to provide your life with different feelings.
Something to do – I see this as your day job, your errands. Things that keep you busy enough that you don’t get lost in the bullshit floating inside your head. Also something that pays the bills.
Something to love – I see this as your family, your friends, and your hobbies. The part of life that keeps you inspired, happy, and hopefully, sane.
Something to hope for – These should keep you afloat on the days the things you do and the things you love are a greater struggle than usual. They provide inspiration to get through the day-to-day.
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So the modified pillars looks like this:
I think I like it better, but I'll probably have to think about it more. Especially the "something to love" part.
See you on the other side,
from ken
Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.
Sometimes the three get all entangled with each other and perspective gets all screwed up. That's what I've always appreciated about you, Ken, is that you have a gift for staying focused. May God bless your new chapter and adventure in life, medical school, my friend. Let's stay connected. Barry
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