How To Find Happiness in Old Age

You'll only find it here

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I believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. From the moment of birth, every human being wants happiness and does not want suffering.
 — His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness

If the Dalai Lama’s words are true, and I believe they are, we are all fundamentally the same. For some of us, happiness is a glass of wine at 5 p.m. For others, it’s a Ford F-150 pickup truck or an In-N-Out Burger with cheese.

Looking for love, sex, or money is a major preoccupation. We dream of winning the lottery or just paying the rent. Or a hot date. But there is one thing that unites us all — we all want to be happy and avoid suffering. And it’s always been like that. The Buddha taught this 2,500 years ago, and we are still looking for happiness in all the wrong places.

We think the happiness we seek is just around the corner in the future, but we will never find it there. The meaning of life and the secret to happiness is in this old story about a bar that had a sign that said, “Free Beer Tomorrow.”

A customer would come into the bar and say, I was here yesterday and noticed your sign, so I came in for my free beer, and the bartender would just point to the sign.

You’ll never be happy in the future; you can only be happy now! The more we realize this, the happier we will be. I believe living in the now is the most important thing we can do to thrive in old age. I’ve spent six years pondering old age and death because I write almost exclusively about them. And I learn a lot from my readers.

One told me about his mother’s 90-year-old husband, who has been in poor health for ten years. The 90-year-old says his frustration is having a young mind trapped in a body that no longer responds. I can relate to that.

My reader agreed and told me he believes that’s where the suffering exists. “To want to travel and have experiences but needing to stay close to the specialists treating your broken body and being hyper aware your end is near would be torture,” he said.

And there it is — the trapdoor to unhappiness.

If I am in the hospital, staying close to the specialists treating my broken body and being hyper aware that my end may be near is exactly what I need to be doing — not dreaming of travel to far-away places.

There is beauty in the present moment, no matter how old you are or where you are. At the end of our lives, we can end up repeating the same thing we’ve always done — longing for happiness in all the wrong places, while forgetting it’s in our heart — the only place we can find it.

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A Zen Hospice worker told me about a man who became radiant and content during the last weeks of his life. He reversed the normal hospice situation of being comforted by his caregivers and became a comfort to them. He enjoyed his simple meals of broth or yogurt and was satisfied watching the breeze gently move the curtains in his window. He had fully accepted his situation and was living those words of wisdom that said: “Wherever you go, there you are.”

Was that dying man happy? Maybe that’s not the best word for it — he was content. He had accepted what he had, rather than longing for something in the future that was not going to happen.

I have been doing this distorted, delayed gratification thinking for a full year regarding my daughter. My feeling was that I had to wait until my daughter resolved her precarious situation before I could get on with my life. I needed to sacrifice my immediate needs for her, because that was my responsibility as a father, I thought.

But I may not have time in the future to really enjoy myself. This is probably the most common mistake we make — waiting for some time in the future to travel, or do that special thing we can’t do now because we think we’re not ready, or too busy.

Do that special thing now — at least get started, because tomorrow never comes.

When that time you call tomorrow comes, it will be today, and today is where we live. So do that thing, make that phone call, have that hard conversation, begin that project now. Take the first step today, even if it’s a small one.

“The journey of a thousand miles starts from beneath your feet,” is a line from the Tao Te Ching I heard long before I meditated or practiced Zen. That line of wisdom always had a deep resonance for me because I’ve always been lazy and prone to procrastination. I needed a philosophical prod.

I used my daughter’s situation as an excuse for neglecting my meditation, my writing, and being present for my wife and friends, and my life in general. And I felt fully justified while doing it. But it’s possible to handle many difficult things in life and not neglect yourself. — I know people who do it every day. My wife, for example.

And there is only one way to pull that off —be fully where you are, wherever you are.

We all want to find happiness, and we can only find it HERE.

Gary
April 2026