Five Things Making Me Happy (Reminiscence Bump / “Connie”)

Hello,

This week, I had a startling realization: I’ve lived in my current apartment in New York City longer than I lived in my hometown of Kansas City. This seems impossible! My K.C. childhood occupies so much real estate in my memory.

When, on an episode of Happier with Gretchen Rubin, I mentioned this fact to my sister and co-host Elizabeth, she was astonished to calculate that in one year, she’ll have lived in her Encino house longer than she lived in Kansas City.

As the poet Robert Southey observed:

Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life. They appear so while they are passing; they seem to have been so when we look back on them; and they take up more room in our memory than all the years that succeed them.

In part, this is because of the “reminiscence bump”; most adults have especially vivid memories from the ages between the ages of 10 and 30.

I’m not a big fan of adventure, change, and novelty, but I push myself to have new experiences, because that’s the best way to make memories stick once we’re on the other side of the reminiscence bump.

Onward,

5 Things Making Me Happy

In my book Life in Five Senses, I write about my love of silence, and my fascination with the noiseless movements of cats and swans. I just realized that this is one reason I love to watch the squirrels in Central Park—the way they leap so gracefully and silently from ground to fence, or branch to branch.

I was deeply moved to read Connie Wang’s piece in The New York Times, “I Got My Name from Connie Chung. So Did They.” The article explains: “A version of the same scenario was playing out in living rooms and hospitals across the country. Asian American families from the late 1970s through the mid-‘90s—mostly Chinese, all new immigrants—had considered the futures of their newborn daughters, and, inspired by one of the few familiar faces on their TVs, signed their own wishes, hopes, and ambition onto countless birth certificates in the form of a single name: Connie.” The thing that made me tear up? Until the author told her, Connie Chung herself was completely unaware of how families had chosen her name as a symbol of their hopes.

It made me happy to bring back the Happier Podcast Book Club to discuss Life in Five Senses. It was fun to be interviewed by Elizabeth, who appears in the book and also gave me great edits as I was writing. We’ve talked about the book and the five senses quite a bit, but we still found much new ground to discuss.

I was fascinated to learn that scientists can now extract DNA from porous artifacts; the skin cells or sweat left behind on tools, ornaments, jewelry and other items can be a source of new insight. They’ve long been able to get DNA from a person’s teeth or bones; recently they were able to get DNA from a 20,000-year-old pendant. I wondered, “What do I handle frequently enough to leave my mark?” then realized that my keyboard is non-porous.

I happened to see a People magazine article in which the renowned photographer Alexi Lubomirski told a funny story: When he got a call from Kensington Palace in 2017, to ask him to take photos for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s engagement, he assumed it was a prank. Here’s a bonkers fact: Alex Lubomirski once took my photograph! I feel a brush with fame.

Updates

One of my "23 for 2023" items is to “visit a new neighborhood in New York City each month.” Take a look at my trip to Little Island. (This park was absolutely built with the five senses in mind.)

This week on Happier with Gretchen Rubin

PODCAST EPISODE: 432

Happier Podcast Book Club: We have a conversation about Life in Five Senses—abandoned titles, most surprising lessons, material that was cut out, the origin of the “What’s Your Neglected Sense?” quiz, and more.

Listen now>