I still find this to be true. Often when you are young you have unrealistic expectations. This is true for many reasons. One, you might expect some of your parents experiences which you may or may not get. Two, the world has changed from the one your parents described to you. And three, you have a completely skewed idea of what your life is supposed to be and who you are supposed to be. So, from 12 to 30 often people want to kill themselves sometimes because life isn't at all what they thought it would be. However, if you can just keep your mental and physical health until you are 30 often you can make it to 50 when you actually might find peace and be happy, even though the physically happiest a person gets is 33. But, if you can maintain enough of your health(on all levels) you should be happier and happier from about 30 onwards.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
The oldest Americans are also the happiest, research finds
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080419/ap_on_he_me/older_and_happier;
I agree with this from my own life experience. For example, the happiest time of my life has been the last 10 years from 50 to 60. The second happiest time of my life my son and two stepkids were 6,7 and 8 and we bought land and built a house on Mt. Shasta, which was a life long dream and then we home schooled our kids and traveled a lot. The third happiest time in my life was from birth to 18. And the most miserable time of my life was from age 18 to 32. From 21 to 23, in fact I had trouble even staying alive in a body. Even though I had many many girlfriends the problem from 18 to 32 was "unrealistic expectations". In other words I had been given a very good education and always had been told I could do anything, I could be President if I wanted. The problem was I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life outside of mountain climbing, surfing, riding motorcycles and dating. This created constant paradoxes in my 20s and didn't even begin to settle down until my son was born when I was 26 and then his mother and I broke up when he was 3 and I 29. However, at 32 I met a lady who had divorced the same year as I and we snow skied together and hiked and built a home in the wilderness on the side of California. We were very happy for about 5 years. The next time I was really happy I was about 51 in 1999 and took my mother and my oldest daughter to Europe. Though my mother has senile dementia now since 2001, still the last decade has been the least stressful personally in my life. When I almost died in 1998 I had to basically retire. Luckily my wife and I could afford to do that. Though the last ten years have also had their ups and downs generally speaking, I have been able to do what I want most of the time. This has given me a kind of peace in my life that I haven't had since childhood when I would lay on the grass and look up at the clouds and read books for hours and dream about the future. Though I'm not like that anymore, I still like to be a deep thinker and to write science fiction, philosophy, and to spend time with my wife and kids even though two of my kids are grown up now. So, though my life has never been easy all in all it has been a good one.
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