Retirement and ‘Is pessimism bad for you?’: maybe looking on the bright side isn’t helpful

I often look through the weekend papers for ideas for this retirement blog. The headline in quotes above was linked to the following sub-heading – Always looking on the dark side can harm your health – unless you’re just old and grumpy. Who could resist reading the article beneath it? Not me, that’s for sure. Apart from the relevance of the ‘old and grumpy’ part, I’ve reached a stage in my life aka my retirement, when my health is becoming an increasing source of concern. It was ever thus for retired people I suppose. For example, I’ve recently, despite years of resisting, started to inject insulin. I feel like a failure but what the heck somebody’s got to do it. Alongside this joyous moment I’ve achieved the tipping point health-wise where it is easier to recount the parts of my body that don’t hurt rather than those that do. The checklist goes something like this: toes (something about necrosis according to my GP) – check; heel (plantar fasciitis) – check; ankles – check; calves – check; knees – big check; peeing – oh yes, big tick; pains in stomach; back and occasionally somewhat worryingly, chest – check; arms and fingers – definitely (have I got arthritis?); shoulder joints (make mental note to stop throwing the ball for the pups) – check; brain – big tick. You get the idea and I’m leaving out a few things not fit for a family blog. So is it possible that my natural pessimism is contributing to or, God forbid, actually causing the above litany of pain?

So, given the above, how could I not read the article? I perhaps should have known better. The paragraphs went something like this in shortened form : latest study from Finland found people ‘in the higher quartile for pessimism had a 2.2 higher risk of dying from heart disease.’ Oh dear. Next paragraph, same study : ‘researchers in same group failed to find any association with optimism and a decreased risk of coronary disease.’ Oh again. I have to say at this point that these findings merely confirm my scepticism about the accuracy of self-report inventories. Professionally my view was that this form of data was unreliable as it assumes that people have some idea about what they are thinking / feeling and that their view is unchanging over a period of time, i.e. they will report the same score from one day to the next, which we know is bollocks. Still never mind, no form of data is entirely reliable, even trained observer observed behaviour (as opposed to unobservable thoughts and emotion (gosh I sound like a psychologist), so read on.

Not for the first time pessimism has been linked to ill health. That’s bad then. Hang on a bit lower in the article – ‘it must be emphasised that these studies only point to an association … None can claim that being pessimistic actually causes someone to die prematurely’. Phew. Hang on, hang on, a little later, an American study of 6,000 people found, ‘for every point increase in optimism there was a corresponding 9% decrease in strokes,” and a bit later, ‘our work suggests that people who expect the best things in life actively take steps to promote health’. Or ‘optimistic people tended to look after themselves better than pessimistic individuals.’ Not looking good for me and my finely honed pessimism, but then right at the end, the saving grace…

At least one study has shown that older people with an optimistic outlook on life were more likely than pessimists to suffer disability and death within the following decade. Being grumpy when you are old may actually pay off. Ha. I knew it, I just needed to keep reading to get to the good bit. And what do you know, my mother  (do not read this link if you are of a sensitive nature) was right all along. Her philosophy of life was, always think the worst then life can only pleasantly surprise you. She did indeed live and breathe this outlook on life. I frequently used to berate her for being, what I caringly called, a miserable old bugger, but she was right all along. The final part of the article settled it for me that we learn to be positive or negative in childhood and no amount of self-help courses or books on learning to be a more positive person will make any difference. So that’s excellent news for a miserable, glass half empty, kind of guy like me and no, pessimism isn’t at all bad for you. I can now sit back, relax and enjoy my dissatisfaction with my retirement life and Mrs Summerhouse can continue down her own sunny life’s highway content in the knowledge that she will always remain a half full kind of woman.

I was thinking the other day that the trouble with retirement is that it gives a greater amount of free time which means there is a so much greater opportunity to agonise about whether we’re doing the right things, using our time to best advantage, blah, blah, blah. When one was working one simply got on with it, not much time to be thinking about life and its meaning, get up and get off to work, earn money, keep house and home together, that’s the way of it. Now this blog is a typical example of what happens to a person, well some persons (I may not be typical), when they retire, they can spend hours trawling through the depths of their aging mind about the rightness or, more likely, the wrongness of things, even spending an hour or so to write about it in a blog. As I said last time or was it the time before, what I expected from my retirement was golf, travel, photography, fun and frivolity and what I’ve actually got is an hour or so agonising, admittedly sitting before a nice log fire, on a comfy sofa, surrounded by my many books, with Mrs SH and one dog snoozing contentedly by my side, after a cup of tea and two pieces of malt loaf with butter on them, extending my creative juices writing this blog. Hang on, this is all starting to sound dangerously positive so I should stop right now. I didn’t retire to become a happy and contented old git. It might shorten my retirement life.