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n early 2015, New York Times reporter John Leland began writing a series of articles that followed the lives of six New Yorkers, aged 85 and older, for an entire year. After being assigned to cover the United States Census and discovering that the 85-and-over population was one of the fastest-growing age groups in the country, he initiated this series as a way of exploring what old age was like through the eyes of people experiencing it.

What Leland didn’t realize was how much wisdom he would gain and the impact his interactions with these seniors would have on his life, which he discusses in a new book he’s written about his experiences entitled Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year among the Oldest Old. In a Times column in January about the effect that writing the series had on him, Leland wrote that

<em>no work I have ever done has brought me as much joy and hope, or changed my outlook on life as profoundly…. The six [elders] became models for the challenges in my own life, living examples of resilience, gratitude and the wisdom that comes from living through ups and downs in history. Even amid the very real hardships of old age, all found reasons or opportunities to be happy….

 Reading of how his six subjects became “examples of resilience, gratitude and the wisdom” due to having lived “through ups and downs in history,” brings to mind the Gemara in Kiddushin (33a), which reports that Rabi Yochanan would rise in the presence of elderly non-Jews because “they have experienced so many events and travails.” </em>

In one post-publication interview, Leland describes himself as something of a “Gloomy Gus for most of my life… but this really made me 100 percent more optimistic about the world and [late old age].” That shift has much to do with one of his octogenarian subjects, Fred Jones. One day, while the two were together in Jones’ apartment, Jones offered his definition of happiness: “Happiness to me is what’s happening now,” he said.

Leland observes that <em>

the apartment, a cluttered wreck that was up two flights of stairs he could barely climb, was an unlikely place to look for happiness, and Mr. Jones, whose health was failing, was an unlikely spokesman. But he never dwelt on his problems. “If you’re not happy at the present time, then you’re not happy,” he said. “Some people say, if I get that new fur coat for the winter, or get myself a new automobile, I’ll be happy then. But you don’t know what’s going to happen by that time. Right now, are you happy?” Whenever I asked him the happiest time of his life, he said without hesitation, “Right now.” </em>

 After that, Leland says, he wrote the words “Happiness Is a Choice You Make” on a sheet of paper and taped it to the wall near his nightstand.

His interactions with these elders also gave him a new perspective on his relationship with his own 89-year-old mother. He says, “I love her and owe her a lot,” but he also saw it as a one-way relationship that “could be tiring sometimes.” But having spent time with people his mom’s age opened Leland’s eyes to what he was receiving from her as well, and now, he says, “My mother’s not a project; she’s a lunch date or a dinner date.”

The mutually enriching dynamic of a giver-receiver relationship is also echoed in the story of one of his subjects, a lady named Helen who is in a nursing home together with Howie, a brain-injured person 20 years her junior. Leland was puzzled by their friendship, given that Helen was so much sharper than Howie, until he realized how much it meant that Howie needed her. “She had worked a job when she was younger; she had raised her kids; she had nursed her husband when he was dying. So she had been needed all this time and then reached old age and wasn’t needed in quite the same way. And it’s a great gift Howie has given her by needing her and it’s a great gift that she’s given Howie by being there for him.”

This reminded me of a recent essay by Arthur Brooks, who will soon be stepping down as head of the American Enterprise Institute, a leading Washington think tank, after a decade at its helm. For those who haven’t heard of him, I’ll suffice by noting that the deeply thoughtful and humane Brooks — a former professional French horn player and professor whose research into the interface between happiness, giving, and free enterprise has won him both a devoted following among conservatives and a hearing from liberals — would be on my personal short list for outstanding potential presidents.

Brooks sought to challenge his readers “to think about American poverty in a new way.” After all, despite the fact that in the last 50 years, government has spent $20 trillion trying to alleviate the plight of the poor, this hasn’t made poverty any more escapable. About the same percentage of the country is in poverty in 2017 as was in 1964.

The problem, Brooks writes, is that the poor are told, both implicitly and explicitly,

<em> that they are not needed by the rest of society. And the result of so many people not being needed is a dignity deficit. When people are told, by everything from labor markets to trends in family formation, “You’re not necessary, you’re not useful,” that will attenuate any sense of dignity. And that leads to a culture and an economy of despair. It leads to opiate and alcohol abuse. It leads to an uptick in suicide. And that’s what we’re seeing in our country. </em>

 Brooks points to a success story that has taught him much about how to address the “dignity deficit” of which he spoke: A nonprofit project in New York City called Ready, Willing & Able, which employs homeless men to sweep the streets, focusing on creating opportunities for these men to be needed.

He writes about one of the people in this program, Rick, whom he’s gotten to know:

<em>When I met him, he’d just gotten out of prison after a long spell. He has a story that you hear a lot: petty crime when he was a teenager, then selling drugs, and finally there was a terrible crime. He had to start over completely.

 He… started out like everyone does — sweeping the streets. He moved on after a few weeks or months into vocational training and then got his first real job, working for an exterminator agency, killing bugs. Many people would call that a dead-end job. But what the organization understands is that work is work and that all work can be sanctified and that all work is a good thing if we use it to build up our lives in the service of people who need us.

 A few months into the program, I asked Rick, “How is your life?” and he said, “Let me show you.” And he showed me an email from his boss: “Rick, emergency bedbug job, East 65th Street. I need you now.” I said, “So what?” He said, “Read it again: ‘I need you now.’ That is the first time in my life anybody has said those words to me.” </em>

We all need that. We all need to be needed. That’s the essence of what it means to be alive. And that — not just a paycheck — might be the most deeply important benefit that we get from employment. No amount of material help can really alleviate the human cost of not being needed.

This has to become the central question that animates our policy discussions. Not, “How can government become more efficient or effective at helping people in poverty?” It has to be: “How can we rebuild an economy and culture where everyone has the tools to be necessary to their families, their communities, and their employers?”

The “all” in “we all need to be needed” isn’t just about homeless guys; it includes all of us, in our families and communities, our shuls and schools and everywhere else. And the question is one for us, too: “How can we create a culture where everyone has the tools to be necessary to others?”

Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 707. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com