"Misery Loves Company"

So, what do you talk about when you get together with your friends? I don’t know exactly when I made this transition, but it appears that a good portion of my conversation revolves around health, or should I say sickness.

It’s not the only thing I talk about, but somehow my conversations always end up discussing illness at some point. Aches, pains, arthritis, degenerated discs, blood diseases, autoimmune diseases, stomach issues - including GERD (ugliest word EVER) and diverticulosis or itis – whatever, hip and/or knee replacements, dental implants, plantar fasciitis, etc.

Let me make it clear that I do not suffer from all the above-listed woes, but I do have a few, not to mention a thing or two I might have intentionally left out, lol. Nothing life threatening or earth shattering, but I’m getting older and wear and tear is a thing. A real thing.

It just strikes me so funny that when I was younger I used to swear I would never do this as I listened to my parents and their friends, and now here I am. It just happens gradually, yet naturally. In a way, it’s a rite of passage, although I don’t plan on passaging just yet.

I tried to remember what I used to talk about in my earlier years, and it took a minute to recall, but there was work and marriage and children with school and sports, and just the busiest of lives.

Now that I’m retired, I have all this forced busyness, the kind of busy that I structure without life demanding I do so. I have the gym, lunch dates, dinner dates, bocce, the pool, shows, movies, and volunteering. And as pleasant and lovely as that is, there’s still quite a bit of downtime which naturally leads to overthinking and paying more attention to ailments, some of which I think I may have ignored for a few decades as I attempted to survive my busy, significant life.

Oh! And I forgot to mention doctor appointments, which is absurd given the topic of this blog, and those certainly fill up a bit of my calendar.

But you know, there is a sick (ha-ha) sort of comfort when discussing ailments in knowing you’re not alone. Everyone’s got at least one thing going on and somehow we all get through it. The saying, “misery loves company,” is so true, which led me to wonder how it originated. Here’s an AI answer that is probably correct as I checked other sites as well.

The phrase "misery loves company" is thought to originate from the demon Mephastophilis in Christopher Marlowe's 16th-century play, Doctor Faustus, who originally said a Latin phrase that translates to "it is a comfort to the unfortunate to have had companions in woe". However, the modern English version was popularized by John Ray in his 1670 collection of proverbs, A Collection of English Proverbs.