It's a common belief that older adults are generally tired, grumpy and unhappy. Movies, TV commercials and late night punch lines often assume older adults are hapless buffoons with nothing better to do than yell “Get off of my lawn!” They like to complain endlessly about their physical ailments to anyone who will listen.This is largely a myth. While physical and cognitive decline are a natural part of the aging process, the truth of aging is very different to the one popular culture would have us believe.
Humans are actually the happiest at the early and later phases of life. Scholar Laura Carstensen calls it The Happiness Curve — or the U-Curve of Happiness. She's spent over three decades researching the topic. Head of the Stanford Center on Longevity, Carstensen's research on happiness found that older adults were actually happier overall than at any other time in their life since childhood. They are happier than their teenage years, their 20's and 30's, happier even than when they became wealthy and successful. This book makes the case that we get better with age, that the best is yet to come.
