The Surprising Joy Of Old Age

If life wanted to mess with you, it couldn’t have come up with a better way than death. Especially the lead-up. Your strength flags; your world narrows; much of what once gave you pleasure and satisfaction is now gone. But as it turns out, happiness is still very much with you—often even more so than before.

- Jeffrey Kluger

In some ways, our youth and middle years are really a sort of training period for the unanticipated pleasure of being an older adult, psychologist Alan D. Castel of the University of California, Los Angeles, argues in his new book, Better With Age: The Psychology of Successful Aging. In one 2006 study Castel cites, a group of 30-year-olds and 70-year-olds were asked which of the two age cohorts was likely to be happier. Both of them chose the 30-year olds. But when those groups were asked about their own subjective happiness, the 70-year-olds came out on top.

Psychologists, anthropologists and other investigators have long been intrigued by similar findings—that old age is often a time defined not by sorrow, dread and regret but rather by peace, gratitude and fulfillment. Investigators looking into the happy senescence phenomenon attribute it to a lot of things: seniors become masters of “terror management theory” or “constructive distraction” or “voluntary affirmation of the obligatory.” In other words, they figure: I’m gonna die? What else is new? Meantime, I’ve got my grandkids here.