people\u2019s happiness tends to follow a U-shaped curve<\/a>; it begins to decline around the age of 18 and hits its lowest point around age 47 or 48, at which point it starts to go back up again.<\/span><\/p>\nResearchers aren\u2019t sure why happiness follows this trajectory. Our personal hypothesis is that after young adulthood, and especially in one\u2019s thirties and forties, an individual can viscerally feel his vitality, his life juices, slowly draining away, and he grieves this loss. By the time he nears 50, he\u2019s forgotten what the buoyancy of youth felt like, so he no longer mourns its memory.<\/span><\/p>\nA depressing theory, I know. But it\u2019s not a bad thing to view the aging process through a sobering lens.<\/span><\/p>\nThere are upsides of aging, and plenty of quotes out there that affirm its advantages. But around here, we find that reciting bleaker mantras to each other is actually a rather life-affirming thing to do.<\/span><\/p>\n A lot of people are fixated on how they plan to stay healthy and active into old age, and this is a great goal to which to aspire. But no matter how much stretching and green smoothie drinking you do, you\u2019re never going to feel the same at 70 as you do at 30. Thinking about how vital you\u2019re going to stay in elderhood, about how much good time you have left, after all, is a way of denying the inevitabilities of mortality \u2014 of escaping the responsibility of making the very most of the present moment. <\/span><\/p>\nThe key to cultivating that carpe diem<\/em> attitude is staying ever cognizant of the fact that old age comes for everyone, and always involves some loss. The following quotes can be a help in that. <\/span><\/p>\nThis kind of reflection is worth regularly engaging in regardless of your age; after all, no matter how far advanced you are in years, you\u2019ll never be as young as you are right now. <\/span><\/p>\n\u201cAfter thirty a man wakes up sad every morning.\u201d <\/span>\u2014Ralph Waldo Emerson<\/p>\n\u201cNo snow falls lighter than the snow of age; but none lies heavier, for it never melts.” <\/span>\u2014L.N. Child<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWhen we are young, we are slavishly employed in procuring something whereby we may live comfortably when we grow old; and when we are old, we perceive it is too late to live as we proposed.\u201d <\/span>\u2014Alexander Pope<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cEvery one desires to live long, but no one would be old.\u201d <\/span>\u2014Jonathan Swift<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cNothing is more disgraceful than that an old man should have nothing to show to prove that he has lived long, except his years.\u201d <\/span>\u2014Seneca<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cA person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called old for the first <\/span>time.\u201d <\/span>\u2014O. W. Holmes<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cAge that lessens the enjoyment of life, increases our desire of living.\u201d <\/span>\u2014Oliver Goldsmith<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cMen of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.\u201d <\/span>\u2014Francis Bacon<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWithout fullness of experience, length of days is nothing. When fullness of life has been achieved, shortness of days is nothing. That is perhaps why the young . . . have usually so little fear of death; they live by intensities that the elderly have forgotten.” <\/span>\u2014Lewis Mumford<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cAs we advance in life, the circle of our pains enlarges, while that of our pleasures contracts.” <\/span>\u2014Sophie Swetchine<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cOld age adds to the respect due to virtue, but it takes nothing from the contempt inspired by vice; it whitens only the hair.\u201d <\/span>\u2014J. P. Senn<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cOld age is a tyrant, which forbids the pleasures of youth on pain of death.\u201d <\/span>\u2014Fran\u00e7ois de La Rochefoucauld<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cForty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.\u201d <\/span>\u2014Victor Hugo<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cHow many fancy they have experience simply because they have grown old.\u201d <\/span>\u2014Stanislaus<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cChildhood sometimes does pay a second visit to a man; youth never.\u201d <\/span>\u2014Anna Jameson<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the life course, people\u2019s happiness tends to follow a U-shaped curve; it begins to decline around the age of 18 and hits its lowest point around age 47 or 48, at which point it starts to go back up again. Researchers aren\u2019t sure why happiness follows this trajectory. Our personal hypothesis is that after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":178806,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[502,42269],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-178805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-character","category-self-improvement"],"featured_image_urls":{"large":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2023\/09\/old-538x280.jpg","aom":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2023\/09\/old-372x230.jpg","reactor-320":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2023\/09\/old-320x213.jpg","reactor-640":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2023\/09\/old-640x427.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178805"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178905,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178805\/revisions\/178905"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178805"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=178805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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