David DeSteno

I can't do now what I did when I was 35.

And so when I started thinking about this, Arthur Brooks had this wonderful article in The Atlantic where he was saying, how do you find meaning in midlife?

And he pointed me to something in that article that spoke well to me, which is this in Hinduism, they have these four stages of life.

The first stage is the student where you're learning what you need to do to basically be successful.

be successful in the world.

The second is the householder, where you got a good job, you're earning money, you're, you know, buying a home, getting married, having kids, you're enjoying in some ways the essential materialistic pleasures of life.

But around 50, they say, when the hair starts to gray and your skin starts to wrinkle, you're supposed to move to a new phase, which I forget the English translation, but the Hindu word for it is vanaprastha.

And it's where you pivot from being the person who's going all out to keep your career going and to get ahead and to earn more money to the sharer of wisdom, right?

And so what that means in life is, okay, maybe I don't have to be the person who's like working, you know, 16 hours a day, but what do I have to offer?

I have experience.

I have wisdom that the younger folks around me don't have.

And to the extent that you can pivot and see yourself as a share of wisdom and to start on that road of not accumulating, but starting to de-accumulate,

At this stage, you're not ready to give away your worldly possessions, but you're ready to give away your wisdom, your experience to help raise others up than trying to climb the ladder yourself.

People who can do that suddenly find more meaning in life.

And it's funny, you know, I was saying before the curve of happiness is like you.

It starts going up again in the 60s and then it keeps going up until the 80s until unless you start to hit really serious health issues.

And what happens is people again

are looking toward what brings them happiness, which is helping others, sharing experiences, positive emotional experiences with others.

And so the idea behind Vana Prastha that Hinduism has figured out was if you can make that pivot earlier, if you can make that pivot in your 50s, you're not going to have that bottom out in happiness.

And in some ways, that's what contemplating death does.