There's Hope!

My mom once told me that her mom had told her that men tend to get much nicer in old age. Yes, she said "men." Women, apparently, at least as she viewed them, didn't change as much. (I put this distinction down to the era. Men's and women's daily lives have become much more similar over the decades, as women have gone to work outside the home and therefore face more of the same frustrations, needs, and encumbrances.) A friend's mother-in-law told her that her, the mother-in-law's, husband, who had been an infamous rager, mellowed a lot with age. Well, as is so often the case, science is now confirming first-person observation. Emotional well-being makes a U-turn in later life. “Goals, because they’re set in temporal context, change systematically with age,” Stanford University psychologist Laura Carstensen explains. “As people perceive the future as increasingly constrained, they set goals that are more realistic and easy to pursue” ~ which leads to emotional stability and satisfaction. (And guess what? This pattern is one more thing we humans have in common with apes): http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-real-roots-of-midlife-crisis/382235/?single_page=true#disqus_thread