{"id":1478,"date":"2015-03-11T07:50:00","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T11:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/2017\/09\/midlife-malaise-and-the-happiness-u-curve\/"},"modified":"2018-05-02T08:52:53","modified_gmt":"2018-05-02T12:52:53","slug":"midlife-malaise-and-the-happiness-u-curve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2015\/03\/midlife-malaise-and-the-happiness-u-curve\/","title":{"rendered":"Midlife Malaise and the Happiness U-Curve"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Atlantic<\/em> magazine cover story last October described living past 75 as pretty darn inadvisable. Then, in quite the about-face, the December cover story championed the Happiness U-Curve and the growing body of research showing that we reliably grow happier, almost regardless of circumstances, after our 40s.<\/p>\n

As writer Jonathan Rauch explains in the article<\/a>, this curve emerges only after researchers have filtered out significant variables, like income and marital and employment status, to reveal the effect of age alone. People don\u2019t reach 80 without facing adversity and loss, often crushing. They have more health problems too. In other words, this increased sense of well-being is not predominantly conferred by things that happen in life. It\u2019s not reserved for mystics or billionaires. It is deeply human and rooted in biology. <\/p>\n

The big take-away for Rauch is the scientific fact that it\u2019s hard to be happy when you\u2019re middle-aged. Titled \u201cThe Real Roots of Midlife Crisis,\u201d the article is sprinkled with anecdotes about acquaintances whose trajectories mirrored Rauch\u2019s own. During their 40s, despite having achieved all kinds of material and professional successes, they were bushwhacked by upheavals and feelings of disappointment and discontent. Almost as bewilderingly, and also independent of circumstance, simply entering their 50s conveyed increased feelings of calm and gratitude.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the shift towards conscious contentment is based in endocrine changes or brain chemistry. But German neuroscientists have found that healthy older people are less prone than younger ones to unhappiness about things they can\u2019t change. Rauch describes becoming more accepting of his limitations and revising his expectations accordingly\u2014and thus his measures of success and failure. He labels this an \u201cexpectations gap\u201d and quotes Princeton economist Hannes Schwandt on the finding that the gap narrows with age. \u201c[It] supports the hypothesis,\u201d Schwandt writes, \u201cthat the age U-shape in life satisfaction is driven by unmet aspirations that are painfully felt during midlife but beneficially abandoned and felt with less regret during old age.\u201d <\/p>\n

Drawing on emerging cognitive science, Rauch calls this wisdom\u2014and fervently wishes he\u2019d found out about it in time to help him through his midlife doldrums. \u201cWhat I wish I had known in my 40s (or, even better, in my late 30s) is that happiness may be affected by age, and the hard part in middle age, whether you call it a midlife crisis or something else, is for many people a transition to something much better\u2014something, there is reason to hope, like wisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t hear about the U-curve until my mid-50s, at which point I figured researchers had cornered two octogenarians, offered them fresh-baked cookies, then asked how they were feeling. Skepticism remains widespread even as corroborating evidence mounts. A 2011 study, conducted by Laura Carstensen and colleagues at the Stanford Longevity Center, found that \u201cthe peak of emotional life may not occur until well into the seventh decade\u201d\u2014and also that this finding is \u201coften met with disbelief in both the general population and the research community.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d recast the big story from one about dissatisfaction in midlife to one about happiness towards the end of life. That\u2019s the message that American culture drowns out most loudly, although ageism shadows the whole life course. Messages about being \u201cover the hill\u201d at 40 are everywhere you look: greeting cards, advertisements, sitcoms. Internalized and unexamined, the notion that it\u2019s all downhill after 40 makes it all the harder to weather that midlife trough. How much better, indeed, to challenge that absurd notion while we\u2019re still young and to be sustained from then on by the knowledge that with age comes happiness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Atlantic<\/em> magazine cover story last October described living past 75 as pretty darn inadvisable. Then, in quite the about-face, the December cover story championed the Happiness U-Curve and the growing body of research showing that we reliably grow happier, almost regardless of circumstances, after our 40s.<\/p>\n

Read more Midlife Malaise and the Happiness U-Curve<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

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