Laura Carstensen

People aren't taking us as seriously as they used to.

You know, there's an invisibility people talk about when they get old that people walk almost right through them and they're just not noticed.

And so if all of that's happening with aging and there it is.

How could it be that older people are emotionally doing well?

Yeah, it challenged all of our basic assumptions about what gives us happiness, right?

It's having a lot of friends.

You know, it's having a bright future.

And here, you know, the older we get, the closer we are to death.

You know, how could it possibly be that people get happier?

Right.

Yes.

One day I interviewed two sisters who lived together in an apartment in San Francisco and

It was an apartment that housed a lot of older people.

And they were talking to me about how sad they were that they had lost many good friends and relatives as they had gotten older.

And I said to them, what about new friends?

There are a lot of people who live here in this building.

Do you reach out to them?

Do you want to make new friends?

And I remember them giving me this kind of blank stare like you just don't get it.

And they said, Laura, we don't have time for those people.