by Zoë Pollock
On the occasion of his 40th birthday, Justin E. H. Smith contemplates them:
Tomas Tranströmer describes life as a comet: with childhood the blazing head, and senescence the dim straggling tail. What causes childhood to blaze like this is surely, in the end, a neurochemical state: we do what we can to keep kids off drugs, but what this misses is that they are always on drugs, drugs that are being produced by their brains themselves. These drugs induce a constant, ecstatic effervescence, and a strong feeling of immortality.
They start to wear off at different times for different people. In my case, their potency dropped off around the age of 27, when I had what might be called my Ivan Il’ich moment, and it finally dawned on me where this process of getting older was ultimately headed.
On a related note, Robert Wright parses a recent study examining the correlation between well-being and "wise-reasoning" as we get older:
Assuming a causal link between these two variables, does the wisdom lead to the well-being or does the well-being lead to the wisdom? … I'm guessing the answer is a little of both: Wisdom leads to well-being, and well-being paves the way for wisdom–and, in particular, for wise action, not just a capacity for wise reasoning. If that's true, then you can imagine getting swept up in a virtuous circle: Acting wisely reduces conflict in your life and strengthens your social relationships, and this fosters a sense of well-being that makes it easier to act wisely, and so on. But there's also the vicious circle scenario–a downward spiral featuring growing unhappiness, commensurately unwise action, deeper unhappiness, and so on. The virtuous circle scenario is certainly more appealing. And it sounds like it wouldn't be that hard. But I'm old enough to know better.
The Dish 