“There’s a general set of goals that guide human behavior throughout life,” says (Laura Carstensen, a psychologist at Stanford.) “We have goals about mating, about attachment, about gaining information, and also about regulating our emotions. And when time horizons are vast and nebulous, as they typically are in youth, people prioritize those goals in different ways than when time horizons are short.”
Carstensen believes, and has demonstrated in her research, that when people have a sense that a lot of time lies ahead of them, they are constantly, chronically focused on gaining information, gaining insights, gathering up an enriched supply of knowledge that will help them in their future.
On the other hand, she says, as people become more viscerally aware of the constraints of time, goals that had seemed salient—future-oriented goals—are no longer so compelling. Instead, what people tend to care about is “meaning in life, emotion, emotional significance,” she says. “In some ways, they’re relieved of the burden of a future.”
It’s a startling idea in some ways, Carstensen’s concept of being “relieved of the burden of a future.” But it’s a concept that is already old news to many. “It turns out that when you’re focused on the here and now, just as Buddhism would say, when you’re focused on the present, it’s really good for mental health,” she says.
As we age, emotions tend to be more positive, more deeply experienced, and more easily regulated. In many older adults, Carstensen has shown, there develops a natural bias toward aspects of life that are emotionally gratifying—as well as a natural disregard for those things that would have, at a younger age, caused anxiety or distress….
From article “Life gets better at 50”
http://news.yahoo.com/life-gets-better-50-012600469.html
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