It seems happiness, like wine matures with age.
Look what a research report published in The New York Times says.
"The results, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were good news for old people, and for those who are getting old. On the global measure, people start out at age 18 feeling pretty good about themselves, and then, apparently, life begins to throw curve balls. They feel worse and worse until they hit 50. At that point, there is a sharp reversal, and people keep getting happier as they age. By the time they are 85, they are even more satisfied with themselves than they were at 18."
And it’s not being driven predominantly by things that happen in life. It is something very deep and quite human that seems to be driving this. Other researchers of psychology wonder why at age 50 does something seem to start to change?
The eastern wisdom has answered this question. The ancient sages have divided life in four stages based on the physical and psychological state of human growth. They have looked at life vertically, not horizontally, namely the evolution of the consciousness.
Osho has talked about a seven-year cycle of change. If we say, life moves in a cycle of seven years, the age 42 is the turning point when a person changes from being materialistic, his need for meditation becomes stronger and if he finds the right doorway he starts growing up instead of growing old.
What Osho has explained in his book The Wisdom of the Sands, Vol 1 # 5 explains the enigma why the old age seems to be happier than the youth.
" Youth cannot have depth, and youth cannot have calm understanding. Youth is feverish, it is a tumultuous time. I'm not saying it is wrong: it creates the possibility to grow. You have to pass through many experiences, sweet and bitter. You have to pass through many stages of feverishness, of ecstasy, of excitement; only then a moment comes when you start understanding. Those experiences prepare you, they cleanse you. You have to pass through the fire of youth to become the pure gold of old age. A really old man is wise, he has some light in him. He has lived his life, he has become ripe. He knows what life is: he knows its joys, its sorrows, its ups and downs, he knows its hells and its heavens. He has seen all. Seeing all, a great understanding has arisen in him, and a compassion and a love."
For mystics like Osho life doesn't end with the old age, it spreads beyond death, it includes death as well.
"When you are becoming old joyously, old age has a beauty of its own, a grandeur of its own, a ripeness, a maturity, a centering. Young people have nothing compared to the experienced, who have lived life and who know it is all just a game.
"The moment a person comes to the point where the whole life is just a game, his old age is so beautiful, so graceful; no young person can be compared to it. His white hair will look like white snow -- just on the highest peak of the mountains. He will die with joy. He has lived his life, now he is entering into a new phase -- death. He will not be reluctant. If he accepted old age joyously, he will accept death also dancingly. He will go with death dancing."
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