Someone on an earlier thread quoted the axiom “After 50, life isn’t about achieving your aspirations, it’s about managing your disappointments.” But I’m 54, and I’m not surprised that it may not be that simple:
… A large Gallup poll has found that by almost any measure, people get happier as they get older, and researchers are not sure why.
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“It could be that there are environmental changes,” said Arthur A. Stone, the lead author of a new study based on the survey, “or it could be psychological changes about the way we view the world, or it could even be biological — for example brain chemistry or endocrine changes.”
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The telephone survey, carried out in 2008, covered more than 340,000 people nationwide, ages 18 to 85, asking various questions about age and sex, current events, personal finances, health and other matters… Finally, there were six yes-or-no questions: Did you experience the following feelings during a large part of the day yesterday: enjoyment, happiness, stress, worry, anger, sadness. The answers, the researchers say, reveal “hedonic well-being,” a person’s immediate experience of those psychological states, unencumbered by revised memories or subjective judgments that the query about general life satisfaction might have evoked.
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The results, published online May 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were good news for old people, and for those who are getting old. On the global measure, people start out at age 18 feeling pretty good about themselves, and then, apparently, life begins to throw curve balls. They feel worse and worse until they hit 50. At that point, there is a sharp reversal, and people keep getting happier as they age. By the time they are 85, they are even more satisfied with themselves than they were at 18.
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In measuring immediate well-being — yesterday’s emotional state — the researchers found that stress declines from age 22 onward, reaching its lowest point at 85. Worry stays fairly steady until 50, then sharply drops off. Anger decreases steadily from 18 on, and sadness rises to a peak at 50, declines to 73, then rises slightly again to 85. Enjoyment and happiness have similar curves: they both decrease gradually until we hit 50, rise steadily for the next 25 years, and then decline very slightly at the end, but they never again reach the low point of our early 50s…
For some people, the universe sends an unusually specific message. The Spousal Unit’s fiftieth birthday was also the first day after he’d lost his job, so he slept late and woke up thinking, “Well, at least it can’t get much worse… “
That was September 11, 2001.
Joseph Nobles
Ouch.
fucen tarmal
i believe you can chart the characteristics and increases and decreases in those values, and compare them to demographics used in advertising and find the not so startling conclusion, people get happier the less they are targeted by ads telling them what they need want or should do….when you look at ads aimed for another demo they are either amusingly stupid, or hilariously annoying, or just plain confusing as hell and dismissed posthaste…
Joseph Nobles
@fucen tarmal: I surf channels looking for ads that appeal to me so I know what shows to watch.
Yutsano
I’m coming up on 38 and I can say for certain I’m a helluva lot happier than I was at 28. It kind of makes me excited for 48 and beyond. I’m also right at the age where I can still fuck up my life majorly and still pick up the pieces.
Oh and let me just say I’m glad this thread didn’t descend into a “Where were you on September 11?” thread. That would A) bum me out and B) be very boring for me.
M. Bouffant
At 56, it’s just a relief knowing that it will be over sooner rather than later.
It’s all downhill, no more pedaling from here!
asiangrrlMN
@fucen tarmal: This was my immediate thought as well. I can’t say I’m happier than I was ten years ago (I’m thirty-nine now), but I can say I’m more aware of who I am, and, more importantly, who I am not.
@Yutsano: Why boring?
stuckinred
I’m 60 years old. I got my Ed D when I was 50. I’ve noticed this “you’re dead after 50” bullshit on the blog quite a bit. Needless to say they don’t have a clue. Rock on!
low-tech cyclist
At 56, I look at my friends and colleagues. Their kids are in college, or already out; their careers are in good shape and on a steady, predictable track between now and retirement not that far off. The heavy lifting of life has been done, now there’s more room for enjoyment of life.
I’m in a somewhat different situation than they are. The career stuff is true for me, too, but I married late, and it took us awhile to realize that our bodies weren’t going to produce the children we wanted. So we adopted a little boy last year, who’s shortly turning 3 years old. Which means we have a lot of heavy lifting ahead – this parenting stuff ain’t for sissies – but a lot of joy too. And no matter how hard the work of raising our little rascal gets, and how exhausted it leaves us, we have the wind at our back of knowing that this is what we really wanted, and have been wanting for most of our adult lives. So we’re exhausted, but pretty damned happy.
Maybe that’s a big part of it: if by 50, you haven’t figured out what you want, and learned to live with the fact that you aren’t going to be President, walk on the moon, or whatever your teenage dream was, it ain’t gonna happen. But most of us have gotten to that combination of things: we’ve figured out who we are, what we can realistically do and hope for, and have finally developed lives that work for us.
Bill E Pilgrim
People in their 60s are getting degrees and starting new careers, people in the 50s are starting families.
On the other hand, pre-schoolers are groomed for ivy league universities, and university students are opening IRAs and planning their retirement already.
Our society is not getting either older or younger, we’re all just swapping places.
I suspect we’ll all meet in the middle in one undifferentiated mass at some point.
stuckinred
They are just jealous because their music sucks.
stuckinred
.
Good luck with that!
Bill E Pilgrim
@stuckinred: Oh good point, they may not be anymore. Scratch that line.
“University students are planning their lives of unbroken servitude right through old age, unless they’re hired by Goldman Sachs.”
stuckinred
@Bill E Pilgrim: Yea, well if I make it till I’m 67 in this gig I’ll still only have 20 years in the retirement program! One drawback to rock and rollin and getting that degree when I did. “Don’t look back, they might be gainin’ on ya”!
low-tech cyclist
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Well, enough of us to be noteworthy, perhaps, but still a pretty small slice of the demographic – hardly enough, I’d think, to explain a major difference in satisfaction levels.
Those of us who are starting families, getting degrees, and the like after 50, I suspect, are much more likely to be doing that because we really want to. A long-ago ex-girlfriend once said, “You don’t always want what you think you want.” We were both in our 20s, and that was very true for us.
A few decades later, what you think you want has had a lot more time to align with what you really want, down inside, even if you haven’t been particularly reflective over the intervening years.
stuckinred
@low-tech cyclist: I wanted a doctorate to stick it to the teachers I had who helped drum me out of high school and into the army when I was 17. (even though I was a punk and deserved it!)
Bill E Pilgrim
@low-tech cyclist: I need a tag on my posts: “This blog comment is for entertainment purposes only”.
Actually though, to be serious for a moment, I think the opposite is happening in a way, or was for some time now. The opposite of what I was joking about, that is.
There really was no big separation line between “children” and “adults” the further back you go. If you look back just a little way, e.g. people in their 80s tell me that “teenager” was really a non-existent concept. It was invented by Madison Avenue to some degree, but in response to more leisure time and disposable income in all ages, but especially in younger people.
Going back further in history, children were also considered just small adults, shorter, less intelligent, undeveloped versions of people, there wasn’t all of the pandering to them or even taking very good care of them, often.
flukebucket
I am on the backside of 50 myself and fully understand the meaning behind the statement, “You kids get off of my lawn!”
Hey stuckinred, do you remember this one?
“We’ll call you when you’re six years old
And drag you to the factory
To train your brain for eighteen years
With promise of security
But then you’re free
And forty years you waste to chase the dollar sign
So you may die in Florida
At the pleasant age of sixty nine”
Oh yeah, and he not busy being born is busy dying.
Currants
I’m 50, and this year giving up tenured full-professorhood (in a community college) to go to law school (public interest law). It’s a little terrifying, but I think it’s the right thing.
demo woman
The LATimes online has a front page photo of Kagan playing softball with this headline.
Photo raises issue of sexual orientation in softball
The NYTimes online has a headline
As Oil Slips Away, So Do Chances for Obama
The Washington Post has breaking news that the Obama administration contacted Romanoff
Assessing the political fallout of the Andrew Romanoff revelation
I’m not providing links to the above articles. I did not waste my time reading the articles.
Now back to the happiness thread.
stuckinred
@flukebucket: Tell it!
R-Jud
I’m only 30, but have to agree: you couldn’t pay me to be 21 again.
I don’t buy the “dead after 50” thing either, probably because of the example set by my parents. Since I’ve been alive, Dad’s been a teacher, a contractor, an innkeeper, and a track & field coach. Mom’s been a teacher, a shop owner, an innkeeper, a fork truck driver (BOB’s not reading, is he?) and now a politician. And they’ve managed all these transitions while raising four kids and coping with a few life-threatening illnesses. They’ve never been rich, and they haven’t always been perfectly happy, but they’re satisfied and they enjoy themselves. I like them.
So much so, in fact, that I’m willing to give them a pass for being Parrotheads.
Becca
I just turned 53 and was thinking the other day about the fact that I’m generally very happy. Drama used to make things interesting. Now it just gets in the way.
low-tech cyclist
@Becca:
So true.
Soprano2
It’ll probably bring a lot of hate down on me, but I’m going to say it anyway – the age of 50 roughly correlates to the time that the heavy lifting of child-raising is over for most people. I think that has something to do with increasing happiness. I heard an interview with the author who wrote “Stumbling on Happiness”. He said that scientific surveys have consistently shown that people are the least happy during the years they are raising children, and their happiness increases when the child-raising years are over. He said he got more arguments from people over this assertion than over anything else in the book. I believe it- parents believe that it’s wrong to say that you’re anything but delirously happy when you’re raising children even when they know that it’s a hard job that puts a lot of stress and worry in your life. (Dons aesbestos flame suit)
As for myself, other than the slow deterioration of my body (these days it’s easier for me to tell you which parts don’t hurt than which parts do) at the age of 49 I can say that life has gotten better as I’ve gotten older. I think part of it is that I’ve grown less and less worried about what everyone else thinks about me.
zmulls
I once read that there was a tribe somewhere (I’m sure this factoid is apocryphal) that held you weren’t the person you were going to be until you were 51. At 51, you had “become” who you were.
I don’t know if it’s true or not. Sure sounds logical. I won’t know for a few more years.
I dreaded, like most people, turning 40. And 40 was a revelation, my favorite age so far. So I may be a little bummed about being two years away from 50, but it might surprise me as well.
Certainly once I get to my mid-50s, and my kids are off at college, I’ll have some different perspectives.
aimai
Great post, thought provoking thread. As it happens I’m turning 50 this year, spouse turned 50 a few months ago. I’m happier than I’ve ever been. But I daresay that if I was ever unhappy, considering how lucky I’ve been, that it was down to pure personal anxiety and much of what was making me anxious was: “What will the future bring me?” and “Who will I be?” kinds of questions. Too much possibility is as daunting a too little.
Like low tech cyclist–hats off to you, btw!–we have youngish children. We married at 35, and had both children right off the bat. What incredible joy that have brought us. And we were too tired to realize we were hitting 50 until just now anyway. Children really make you grow up, and keep you young, all at the same time.
Low Tech, I know how incredibly busy you must be, but if you aren’t already doing it try to sit down and write a quick email to a close friend, or to your future child, just getting down the essentials of his day. I’ve been spending a week going through the emails I sent my in laws as the girls were growing up and they are just incredibly funny and moving. The children have been reading them, too, and discovered so much about themselves, and parenthood, and their parents as people.
aimai
jibeaux
Well, I’ll turn 50 a few weeks after, hopefully, my littlest will go off to college. I’m 35 now, so that’s sort of projecting. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a correlation there. I adore my kids and they are awesome, but my husband is awesome too, and sometimes we like to be just twosies.
gbear
It’s because we know that each passing year is one less shitty tortured year to live. How could this not make us happy?
ellaesther
Funny you should say that. I’m 45 and I’m actually in full-on “managing your disappointments” mode, because the professional life as a writer that I thought I was working toward my entire adult life without ever quite achieving it – just dissipated into thin air. I’m trying to live a life I can be proud of, even as I go through the mother of all mid-life crises. (Hey, I even wrote a little something about it!)
Yet at the same time, in my personal life, I have truly never been happier, and the ability to do that kind of compartmentalization, the ability to see joy where it is, rather than bemoan its non-universality, is a gift of age, absolutely.
AND THEN THERE’S THE FACT THAT JOHN COLE FRONT-PAGED ME YESTERDAY AND PERMA-LINKED ME TODAY!! (I’m Emily Hauser! Nice to meet you!) So, you know, sometimes one also achieves ones aspirations in one’s middle years! (And if you think I’m over-stating that for comedic effect, you don’t know me very well).
flukebucket
@Soprano2:
I think you hit the nail on the head. There is untold joy in raising children but there is fear and heartache and misery involved also. The relief you feel when they are educated and married and out on their own is hard to put into words. You feel like you have finished a great marathon.
And then you find out you are about to have grandchildren.
The aches and the pains are also a weird part of getting older. It is pointless to try and tell it to the younger but they will get there eventually.
One morning while I was shaving I heard my wife who was still in the bed moan out in pain and I asked her what had happened.
She said, “I rolled over”
That is all it takes.
ellaesther
@flukebucket: When I was in graduate school, pregnant with my first, and told my adviser that I wanted to discuss “my future” — meaning that summer’s Arabic classes — he glanced at my belly, looked me in the eye and said:
“Thirty years of heartache.”
When I related this story to my aunt, she said:
“Only 30 years?”
phoebes-in-santa fe
Well, I’ll be 60 next January 15th – beware the Ides of January? – and I can honestly say that I don’t even want to be 58 again! I left the marriage-from-hell when I was in my early 40s and each year – knock wood – has been happier than the last. I have two great sons – ages 30 and 28 – and last week the older one graduated from Johns Hopkins SAIS program in DC and the younger one got married in Vermont.
I have lots of friends and a great relationship with my ex-husband (it’s better to have a good divorce than a bad marriage) and his family. I’m very close with my own family.
I’ve had three careers – travel agent, book seller, and crafts gallery owner – since college. Now I’m happily “semi-retired” in a wonderful city. Sure, I’ve had some losses. Sister and sister-in-law both dying at young ages – 61 and 44 – of cancer has been difficult to face. One of my three cats died two weeks ago during routine surgery, but I’m going out today to the Santa Fe Animal Shelter and adopting a new cat.
But – knock wood, again – I’m reasonably healthy as are my children. I don’t mind turning 60 any more than I minded turning 50, 40, and 30. I’m the youngest of three girls and I’ve always wanted “to be one of the big girls”, plus, I’ve watched family and friends age gracefully so I’ve always been encouraged the same thing will happen to me.
So, no, at this point – even though I’m on the “downside” of things, I’m happy. (Let’s hope it lasts!)
Persia
@ellaesther: I’m doing the same thing, career-wise. My path at Current Job is deadending and I have to figure out what to do next.
But you, you’ve been on fire. You deserved those links!
ellaesther
@Persia: Today, I am rich in eyeballs! And eyeballs are precious to a writer, so I’m pretty good today.
And thank you! It’s been quite a week for someone of my background and inclinations, it surely has.
So sorry for the deadendingness of Current Job. It is the fate of so many of us, and it sucks really, really hard.
bemused
This might sound eye-rolling corny to 20 somethings but I appreciate the small things in life much more in my 50’s, things I didn’t even notice in my 20’s or found annoying & a waste of time.
The only thing I wish I had from my 20’s is the energy I had then compared to now. I would definitely make better use of that energy now than then.
tesslibrarian
I was thrilled to turn 30, thinking I’d quit being an idiot once I was out of my 20s. It took until maybe 32 or 33–whenever I went into therapy and figured some things out about what I wanted out of my life, and more importantly, what I didn’t want even though it was expected of me. But I know a lot of women who have made major life changes at that age.
I’m 39 now, and just naturally expect my 40s to be better than my 30s. I’m with R-Jud: you couldn’t pay me to be 21 again. I was 20 lbs. lighter, in better shape, and totally clueless. I watch each fall as a new pack of bright-faced freshmen hit town, I always thank heavens I don’t have to relearn all that’s ahead of them to learn.
DirtyAussie
The finding that happiness increases with age needs to be treated with caution, especially with studies like the one above when everyone is asked the question at the same time. It could be that those in their 50’s have just always been happier than those in their 30’s. That is, their overall level of happiness may not have changed through out their life, but they are happier relative to the younger generations. Both explanations are plausible, yet have not been fully tested yet as no survey has been consistently asking people about their happiness levels over the life course.
In regard to the impact of children upon happiness, it is correct that many scientific studies have found that marital happiness generally follows a U-shaped curve. It starts off high (the honeymoon period) and then starts to decline around the time that most couples start having children. This decline continues until around 20-25 years (right around when kids start to leave home) into a marriage when marital happiness starts to increase again. However, this pattern is found for couples with children and those without, so there is something else at work here!
Poopyman
Oh my. There are too many comments to hit “Reply” on. I just joined the 56 year old cohort on Tuesday. 1953-54 must have been a very good year. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
I guess for me the past 8-10 years have been about coming to terms with what never was and ain’t gonna be, with a little bit of ain’t as quick/strong/fast as I used to be, but tempered with “OK, now what do I want?” and realizing that the possibilities are actually broader than when I was 18, because at 18 I didn’t have the life experience to see nearly as far as I can today.
25 years ago I rejected the idea of going back to grad school because I thought I was too old.
But I was so much older then – I’m younger than that now.
Poopyman
@bemused:
Oy! From your keyboard to the FSMs meatball-eyes!
flukebucket
Damn right. I started to use that one earlier.
Ain’t that the truth! I was telling my wife just the other day that when the kids were little I spent a lot of time thinking, “oh Lord, don’t let anything happen to my wife. We have kids to raise and what would I do without her?”
Now that the kids are grown I find myself thinking, “oh Lord, don’t let anything happen to my wife. The kids are gone and what would I do without her?”
It finally dawned on me that there is never going to come a time when I think, “Fuck it Lord. You can have her now”
Leisureguy
I’m 70—almost 70 1/2—and I’ve never been happier. I can trace it to several things:
I’m retired. I never fit well into organizations so my sojourn in the world of work was only intermittently happy—and basically an uphill struggle. So one major contribution is that I now control the timing and content of my activities—a state difficult to achieve at work, but possible. (Cf. William Oncken’s Managing Management Time)
I’m somewhat reclusive and enjoy solitude, much easier to have now.
I’ve learned that things are temporary.
artem1s
getting to 50 was somewhat disturbing. the whole ‘must be a clerical mistake” thing. now that I am actually here it obviously doesn’t feel all that different than any other age. I am happier than I have been for quite some time. and much of that it related to knowing what I want and what is likely to happen next. there is a lot of comfort in realizing that apocryphal events just don’t happen all that often and most of us will die before we even know one is happening. so there isn’t that to worry about.
for me that might be the most annoying thing about the teabaggers, firebaggers, cheetoheads, et al. group think that requires working its members into some sort of frenzy are a real turn off. I’ve never seen any good come from shouting and stomping of feet. so now i tend to gravitate to people who favor slow and steady work to right wrongs and rational thinking and constructive problem solving. It’s amazing how pleasant life can be once you remove annoying, destructive people from the equation.
Randy P
I’m 52, turning 53 in November. My wife was past 50 when she got her Ph.D. and just finished year 2 of a tenure track faculty post.
We’ve just realized that I may be able to walk away from my corporate job at 55, PROVIDED I invest the time between now and then reinventing myself in the ways I want so that there’s a reasonable amount of replacement income (something like half what I’m earning now).
I’ve been a technical math/science/programming guy my whole life, but for some reason language has been a growing passion in the last few years. I haven’t seen any evidence that my ability to learn language has slowed down. But I am frustrated that I can’t seem to get fluent in anything. I’m trying the one-at-a-time approach right now, taking intensive Spanish lessons now and hopefully doing an immersion German course next year. Currently on my list of languages I’d like to learn: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Greek, Russian, Hindi. (I’m at the “can read a newspaper but can’t hold a conversation” stage in the first four). And the list is growing rather than shrinking. And this is only one “hobby” I’m trying to find time to seriously explore. There are several others.
So no, I don’t think lack of ambition is my issue.
My issue between now and 55 is to try to figure out how to get somebody to pay me to play with my hobbies.
artem1s
@flukebucket:
damn, that’s so sweet!
Randy P
@ellaesther: Read your midlife crisis article. Endings are tough. You don’t know who you want to be next. But I guarantee that it’s out there, and it’s going to make you happy, and you won’t be able to predict in advance what it is.
This way: The days of one career your whole life are long gone, if they ever existed. We will all experience several different careers. You will show them how it’s done and how you keep your personal equilibrium while doing it.
One of my personal heroes is Benjamin Franklin, who had time to live a whole series of careers sequentially. I’m researching his electrical experiments right now. He got interested in electricity (then a novelty). He walked away from the printing business, spent seven years turning a novelty into a science, got his scientific fame, then closed the doors on that career and moved on to the next thing.
ktward
Five days into my 50th year, I’m giddy with relief. Only 360 more days to go!
(Wait, is 2011 a leap? Maybe it’s 361.)
Bill H
Well, I am not at all surprised. I am 67, my health is not very good, my marriage sucks, I have very little money, the world is in chaos, my nation has devolved into idiocy, and I am absolutely delighted with my life. I would change absolutely nothing. I love bring an “old guy.”
Sheila
The universe always sends specific messages. It is our responsibility to interpret them, not always easy. But perhaps this is why older people are happier, because they’ve had more time to learn to interpret the messages and thus are more successful at it.
Beej
As one who has “gotten older”, and who has, indeed, gotten happier, I would surmise that the reason has something to do with having more experience in handling the s#%t as it comes down. Somehow, many of the things that you really thought were important in past years (am I going to get a promotion? do I earn more than my rivals? are the kids going to a)wreck the car b)go to jail c)move back home, etc.) have either resolved themselves or you figured out that whichever way it went it was not a matter of life and death. Then too, the chances that you really have experienced something that was life and death (like my husband’s heart attack and triple bypass a few years back)increase with age. Those experiences somehow clarify just what is and is not important.
tkogrumpy
@ellaesther: Patience, patience, your two years younger than my little boy, who has yet to find out who he really is.
tkogrumpy
@flukebucket: Cripes, can I ever relate to that. Too many years dancing on 12/12 pitched roofs.
tkogrumpy
@Leisureguy: Ditto.
Bruce Webb
Most everyone I know is between 50 and 70 years old and mostly we share the metric used by my friend Jake. Every day is a good day that you remain vertical and sucking air.
Lightning can strike after 50, you can win the Lotto or get a publisher for that book you have been working on for 25 years or have people finally figure out that your art doesn’t suck. But mostly tomorrow is likely to be like yesterday with your life’s arc pointing neither up or too rapidly down. It’s not fatalism, not exactly, just an understanding that as you get older your probability distribution has smaller bounds, you being that much closer to the end.
Chinn Romney
It’s actually my birthday today. I’m 51. Divorce pending after nearly 20 years together. I’ve managed to avoid becoming road kill on the information superhighway for 25+ years, but suddenly my job is on very thin ice. If you asked me 2 years ago how I was I’d starting singing my favorite verse from Monty Python’s “Always look on the Bright Side of Life”. (“Life’s a piece of shit, when you think of it”).
These days I sing REM’s ‘End of the World as we Know it”. And I feel fine. ‘Bout time one of these studies got something right.
Wag
48 1/2 years old, my first born is a junior in college, my second graduated high school last weekend. The second litter consists of a delightful pair of 4 1/2 year old boy/girl twins. Raising kids the second time around has been easier for me, but has been hard on my 38 year old wife (her first time as a parent). I think the happiness that comes with aging comes from being able to accept the things you can’t change. That said, a good round of mojitos makes a big difference, too.
Poopyman
Nothing to add. Just thought I’d grab the fifty-sixth comment because, y’know, “Poopyman @ 56”.
licensed to kill time
The thing I’ve found about getting older is that things just don’t seem to matter as much. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that I tend to take a longer view and realize that all my sturm und drang about whatever issue never affected it much anyway. I don’t think that’s giving up, just reality. Kind of a calm acceptance vibe.
Oldster Zen.
Mainer
You can’t make claims about what happens over the life cycle from cross-sectional data, at least not cross-sectional data alone.
All this study shows is that people of different age groups in 2010 have different levels of happiness. But those differences could be due to their different experiences through life. 80 year-olds lived through WWII and the Depression. People who did so may be quite content to have survived those and then lived through a long spate of economic growth. 50 year-olds grew up during that time of growth and progress. Younger folks have other experiences due to the conditions of the world in which they found themselves. Furthermore, due to differing dominant values during one’s youth and early adulthood, there may be different understandings in the age groups of what it means to be happy.
The social science distinction is between life-cycle effects (differences due to aging) versus cohort effects (differences due to experiences, particular in one’s youth). Both may be involved here.
Ruckus
60 here and I’m not sure happy is the proper term. Settled, comfortable in my own skin, nothing to prove. I know who I am. I know for the most part what I can do. I for the most part know my limitations.
I think happy is a somewhat overrated term. It means so many different things to each of us. And what makes us happy at 20 is most likely a completely different answer than at 50 or 60. I think if I remember correctly at 20 I wanted to get laid and not killed. After 40 more years I’ve accomplished both of those. On a number of occasions. I’m also on my third career and this one is the best, even though I’m making the least money.
When someone asks me, how’s it going, the reply is “They haven’t revoked my breathing permit, so pretty good.”
A friends reply to how’s life treating you, “It doesn’t treat me, it sends me a bill.” He’s in his late forties and has survived kidney cancer, so he’s probably right on that bill.