I ran across a study decades ago that significantly changed my way of thinking about my lived experience. It was, I think, in Psychology Today, a magazine I’m not even sure is around anymore. I don’t remember the article as being particularly well-written, or displaying tremendous depth or nuanced analysis. I’m not sure it even struck me as noteworthy at the time. It simply stated a couple of conclusions that stuck in my head, and the longer they stuck there, the more I realized those conclusions carried some truth.
The study was an attempt to better understand people’s perceptions of their vacations. It asked people if they enjoyed their latest vacation, and then asked a series of questions about the experience, trying to get at what made a vacation satisfying, or unsatisfying.
Not exactly ground-breaking research.
What they found was this: objective measures of good or bad experiences (e.g. great restaurant, fun water park) didn’t play a huge factor in whether people had satisfying or unsatisfying vacation. Rather, whether a vacation was seen as satisfying depended upon two variables: a) if there was ONE great experience that was seen as iconic of the entirety of the trip, and b) the trip ended with a good experience.
Let’s take the “one great experience” conclusion first. In other words, if you have an easily remembered good experience that can be recalled as emblematic of the entire trip, and use it to sort of “stand in” for the entirety of the vacation, your trip is more likely to be seen as satisfactory. That makes sense to me. Someone asks, how was your trip to Canyonlands?, and you immediately remember the frightful thrill as a meteor exploded over your head in the middle of the night as you lay on the ground star-gazing, you are likely to go, it was awesome!, and start telling them about that deeply cool meteor. You are less likely to remember the freezing cold tent and inadequate sleeping bag later that night, or of the sand that got into every nook and cranny of your food, clothes and camping equipment.
The second conclusion is the one that has legs, and came to color my thinking about a great deal of other things as well. If a vacation ends well, even a crappy vacation, you’ll see it as having been a better time. You’re more likely to remember, and emphasize, the last bit of your travels, and use them to “stand in” for the trip.
Nail the landing, and your memories are heightened.
This is the conclusion that has colored so much of my thinking, because it applies to many other situations as well. The vacation that ends well is more likely to result in good, lasting memories. A day that ends well colors your memory of the day. A book that really lands the ending is more likely to make you forgive earlier flaws in the book (although books, to me, are not always ruined by a less than perfect ending, I can forgive a book that doesn’t nail the landing if the bulk of the book was a satisfying ride), and a movie was a great twist at the end can redeem an hour and a half of sloppy storytelling.
Interestingly, the converse is not true, according to the article. Having a vacation that ended badly did not inordinately color the vacation as being a poor one. And having ONE bad experience that stood in for the other bad experiences on the trip did not make for worse memories. Rather, these were conditions that specifically promoted happy memories.
So. The larger lesson: end things well, even crappy things, and your memories of them will be improved. You improve an experience by ending on a good note.
It applies to baseball seasons (I am not a fan of other sports and so cannot speak to them). It applies to weekends. It doesn’t seem to apply to relationships, but that’s probably due to the fact that the end of a relationship often implies it ended for a reason.
It applies to life. Those of you who have read the more recent Oort Cloud posts know of my recent infatuation with suburbia and early retirement and a life of daily writing. I’m living a relatively happy and comfortable life lately. Full of struggles and disappointments and continuing frustrations, like any life, but overall I feel a sense of balance and ease.
I’m old enough to know it won’t last. There is an ebb an a flow to events, and I have accepted that life is a continuing process of balancing, losing that balance, and struggling to rebalance. The ever-rolling, ever-uncaring wheel of karma. The period of my life directly before this one involved a great deal of stress and loss and chaos, and for a while I just kept my head down and pushed my way through, partly for me, partly for my kids. I had the faith that things would get better.
They did.
And now I get the entirely temporary reward for my efforts: a rear-view mirror reflection of my life as it’s been lived so far, unexpectedly brightened by my good fortune of late, a lucky streak that finds me buoyed by love and family and the results of my and my loved one’s perseverance. Like that Psychology today article told me so long ago, my good recent memories allow me a fond optimism as I look down the years.
The feeling won’t last, but it doesn’t need to. I’m happy right here, right now, and I am learning that not only is that enough, it’s quite literally everything.
Peace.
The links. As always, if you like my writing, you know the drill.
September’s story: Exit Ramp
August’s story: Monster
July’s story: Goodneighbor.com
June’s story: Feral
May’s story: Nine Lives
April’s story: Prince Albert in a Can
March’s story: Fuck, Marry, Kill
February’s story: Veronica Scissors
My first novel, Life Under Water
My erotic flash fiction series, Serious Moonlight (as J G Cain)