Lighter as We Go

The fears of aging have been one long cascading domino effect through the years: twenty year-olds dread thirty; forty year-olds fear fifty; sixty fears seventy and so it goes. And there is something to worry about though it isn't what you'd expect: research shows that having a bad attitude toward aging when we're young is associated with poorer health when we're older. <p/>These worries tend to peak in midlife; but in <em>Lighter as We Go</em> Mindy Greenstein and Jimmie Holland show us that contrary to common wisdom our sense of well-being actually increases with our age--often even in the presence of illness or disability. For the first time Greenstein and Holland--on a joint venture between an 85 year-old and a fifty year-old--explore positive psychology concepts of character strengths and virtues to unveil how and why through the course of a lifetime we learn who we are as we go. Drawing from the authors' own personal intergenerational friendship as well as a broad array of research from many different areas--including social psychology anthropology neuroscience humanities psychiatry and gerontology--<em>Lighter as We Go </em>introduces compassion justice community and culture to help calm our cascading fears of aging.<br>