We hear that youth is wasted on the young. People who say this are accepting the myth that only the young can enjoy life to the fullest. The truth is that older people do not consider their young days to be their best days; most enjoy their senior years more than any other part of their life.
Warren was a middle-aged professor. Comfortable in all respects, he anticipated that he would continue teaching for many years. The college faced a budget shortfall, however, and took the unprecedented step of eliminating a number of its academic departments, including Warren's.
For Warren, everything seemed to have been destroyed. Everything he counted on was gone, and he felt too old to start all over again. Too old to search for another college to employ
him, and too old to restart his life. Instead of giving up, Warren realized how much the world
had to offer. Instead of concluding that he had suffered a loss that could never be replaced, he chose to focus on the opportunity set before him. Never before had he had the chance to start again, to decide what he wanted to do and where he wanted to
doit.
He wound up taking a year off from the world to live in a rural town. And how did he feel at the end of the year? "I've never been better."
Researchers conducted a long-term study of northern Californians, interviewing subjects multiple times over three decades. When asked when they had been the happiest in their lives, each time eight out of ten answered "right now."
Field 1997
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