“We don’t really shift our focus to, how do we live well in this extra time,” M.T. Connolly, author of the new book The Measure of Our Age, tells Fortune. “We miss out on a lot of the best stuff about it.”
While getting older comes with a host of challenges, including ageism and the pressure on women to “appear younger,” there are many reasons getting older can be exciting, says Connolly.
“A lot of people get happier as they age because they start to focus more on the meaningful parts of existence and emotional meaning and positive experience as finitude gets more real,” she says.