Aging for anyone who is experiencing it does have its downside. There’s an altered appearance which can be distressing and there’s a loss of energy which can be limiting. Cognition can be impaired too. But there’s an upside, a handling of emotions that makes life much easier. Susan Turk Charles, a psychologist at the university of California, Irvine has been focusing on how older people regulate their emotions and what she found is that when it comes to emotions it’s the reverse of what happens physically, older people have greater ability to handle and regulate their emotions. It’s due to experience, and it’s also perhaps the fact that being closer to the end of their lives, older people tend to have a perspective which eliminates smaller issues. They know how to pick their battles, and as a result can eliminate certain amount of stress. Of course it may not be universal, because many of the people studied had a certain level of financial well being, but not surprisingly it does apply to people with certain level of cognitive impairment. Apparently the impairment does not necessarily interfere with a certain level of happiness. The hope is that by better understanding what makes older people better adjusted becomes something that can be applied to those who are younger. The research as far as I can gather is still in a new field, but it does make a too often overlooked point that aging has positive aspects, that the experience we gather as we live, does matter and if we allow it we can benefit from what we learned or lived through.