The common wisdom is that the elderly have lessons for us if we can stand still enough to listed. The book, Happiness is a Choice You Make gives you example after example of that but also simply shares the lives of a sampling of people at the twilight of their lives.
Author John Leland has chosen a nice group of people to illuminate both the past and the present and the challenges that occur as we age and our bodies start to wear out and wear thin.
This book could easily get too maudlin or too sugary sweet but Leland, perhaps bringing his middle age angst to the writing, only veers into either side, never staying for too long. Sometimes he tries to shoehorn a life into a general life tip example but mostly he just distills down what is going on and how all ages can be a little happier earlier in life.
Thankfully this also doesn’t become a self-help book either. More a lighted path that you can either take or not.
A happy beer choice would be for you hoarders (myself included) to find a beer from their deep cellar. Maybe even the oldest one and open it! If you can’t bear to do that, perhaps pick up a nice barleywine to sip as you read this engrossing book.
