I am, for sure, happier and less cynical as I grow older, and I am in my 50's now. I am more tolerant, more patient, more appreciative, more sympathetic, and have much less to worry about. The kids are grown and on their own, I am working less, chasing the dollar less, not trying to claw my way to the top at work anymore. I make time for relaxation, meditation, walking, enjoying my pets and even working with other people's. I have great conversations with my adult "kids" and appreciate them for the adults they are now. I am no longer responsible for their every need and I love relating to them as adults. I enjoy talking with young people, I enjoy talking with older people. I tolerate all perspectives much more than I did as a younger person. I garden, travel and appreciate beauty. This is the best time in my life!

WE? 0r YOU? I am 52 years young and grow happier each day. Not to not say that in 52 years I have not had many low times and have been touched by great loss. I beleive that is is how we refect upon the time and turmoil that makes us. If we learn we grow when we grow we are happy! And that is totally up to you.

I have a theory about this, which I call the Theory of Novel Experiences. I usually apply it to time moving faster as we get older, but it applies equally to becoming more cynical.

The theory is this: We mark time in our lives by the significant things that happen to us. When we are young, everything is new and exciting to us. So when a particular span of time has passed (say, a year), and a lot of significant things have happened to us during that time, the year feels full-filling.

But as we get older and more things that happen to us have already happened, we get to a point where a year passes, and very few novel things happen to us during that time, and so there are fewer experiences by which we mark that time. In effect, those experiences could have been compressed into a month instead of a year. The year therefore feels like it passed faster because few things happened that were interesting, and we feel not that much different than when the year started (a year feels like a month).

In the same way, we become what you call cynical. Sometimes this cynicism is healthy; when we are younger we sometimes have grand, utopian ideas about the way the world should be, and we get so attached to those ideas that we make ourselves unhappy. But if we can accept the way things are, it frees our mind to be happy in the present moment, which can give us the potential to be happier overall.

Youth is definitely a "relative" term. I remember being happy before I entered my teens, for example, but miserable once puberty hit. I don't agree with the postulate that we are happier when we are younger because we are closer to our source, as it is clear that we "are" and always have "been" source. The sense of individuality or separation is simply an "expression" of this source. I think that what actually happens falls more along the lines of a trajectory of development that is echoed in the adage that "ignorance is bliss." For as children we do not have much to identify with and contrast, such faculties are just developing. I remember that the most important thing in the world for me as a little boy was play. I wished for toy cars, couldn't wait for my parents to buy me a bag filled with plastic toy soldiers with which I could create grand dramas, battles that I could turn into all out wars! I wasn't worried about money for rent as my parents were. I wasn't thinking about what I could have accomplished in my life. I, in others words, did not yet have enough mental ammunition with which to attack myself! My life experience and cognitive faculties had not yet made such endeavors a possibility.

Time ensures that we transcend stages that we once identified with, if this wasn't the case, there wouldn't be any growth or development. Soon the self becomes more solidified and other things take center stage. The innocence of play no longer has the same gravitational pull. The ego is soon thought to be a real entity, source has identified with a "me" and all our focus seems to direct towards this "me." How to perfect the me, ensure its survival, make it more comfortable, more admirable, more accepted, a leader that others follow, one that everyone respects, perhaps fear, etc. It is this hatching out of the "me," what some psychologist call "egocentrism" that enables the suffering to become more prominent. Some call this bondage because that is exactly how it feels! The more I do for the "me" the more separate I seem to feel from everyone else, the more trapped in my own prison I become!

Anyway, in a nutshell, it is this sense of separation, what some call the "primary boundary" which turns the tables on our human experience. At first it looks quite bad, like a mistake in nature, but in actuality it is a genuine blessing, an amazing strategy. Because from this hatching out of our fused states, which were predominant during our earlier years, now there is a being that can contribute, inspire change, love, etc. And development continues! It is "then" (an not before as some have suggested) that one is able to realize the illusory nature of the game, when one is able to "realize," "directly" that one is and always has been edgeless, boundless, attributeless source, the womb of infinite possibilities! A child cannot realize this because his cognitive abilities have not yet developed to the point that would allow him or her to look right at the "seeming" boundaries and recognize their illusory nature. A child may not even have that curiosity, for it seems that the effects of bondage, our phases of acute suffering, that are the catalyst for this curiosity and wonder.

Just my two cents

Nowness

At a very young age I believed that adults could not have once been children like me. How cold they be? They say they were once like us and of course had it worse than us. But wouldn't that make them more understanding?

NO. Adults do not have the same silly sparkle, that world of wonderment and fun. Saying things like "Cause I said so" (what a crock..you are just to lazy to explain it to me). It seemed like they had many unreasonable responses like that as a child.

I became more and more fearful of becoming "them". When does this happen? When is that magical (not so much) moment that I suddenly transform to an adult that does not remember being a child? Please do not let that happen to me!

I never wanted to forget that feeling. I swore to uphold the Children's Code! It seems as if we are 2 different species. Please don't let this happen to me.

One day at about the age of 20 I was working as a DJ at the local roller rink and I had just gotten in an argument with my girlfriend. Still upset from the girlfriend, a young boy asked me to play a song for him and his friends. Still flustered and too lazy to look for it I blew of the kid. He said why can't you play it? I said...."cause I said so"

Uh-oh "It" happened. I became one of those alien people who bullshit kids. He looked at me with the same disgust that I gave my mother when I heard that turd of a line. He turned around and tried to skate off. I quickly grabbed the back of his shirt and said wait! Startled the young boy snapped around. I said "Hey, I am sorry I just got in a fight with my girlfriend and the truth is I do not feel like looking for your song right now. But if I come across it I will definitely play it" He half smiled and said thanks. Not so much for the song thing, his eyes said thanks for copping to that stupid "cause I sad so" line.

After that I never made it to the dark side, where one losses its playfulness, creativity, innocent honesty and wonderment.

I still occasionally buy balloons. I still talk real close to the electric fan to hear the funny sounds and I still skip around :)

I still uphold the childrens code.

It is my duty.

Like they say "ignorance is bliss" I think if we ask "what makes me happy?" just as kids have a curiosity and fascination to discover their world. Find that curiousity and fascination again, and enjoy your discoveries. It's all about the awe of mystery and happiness. Is your glass half empty or half full when you are traveling your world?

"Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it." ~ Groucho Marx

I think none of you who answered have attained the age of the next/last cycle which is everlasting happiness. This occurs when you reach an age where you recognize all the wealth and disaster in the world, The gladness, The sorrow, yet it does not overcome you with pain or sorrow. You alone are responsible for your happiness. You alone can produce it, receive it, bear it, and share it. No one else can even share your happiness unless you allow it. Everything that happens to a person is attracted to that person through either direct attraction or the attraction of allowance, in which you directly open yourself to it. You usually do not realize what you are allowing or even that you are in that mode until you wonder why whatever happened happens. Then you realize only you have allowed this to come into your life by attraction somehow. Again, you are directly responsible for whatever happens in your life, and you must take this responsibility to yourself. You may not deny it for it is a fact, whether you accept it or not. It may also affect others, especially loved ones, those closest to you. Then you may feel guilt for that......which you should accept because those persons closest to you believe in and trust you for their care. They have not reached an age where they accept responsibility for themselves yet. It is a chance everyone takes though.....it is called Life. It can be so fulfilling and so joyous, but so hard to attain these blessings without a guide and/or Faith.

maybe part of the nature of the 'human beast' that is 'stuck' in its journey to become the man-god

well when you are a child you are innocent. then the ego step in. then people do bad stuff to each other out of their self-rightenous from ego. and if they do not take back control of their ego they continue to do it all there life seeking money and power and will step on anny one to achive that and will think they are better then other people because of what they have acquire. but that is not the way that it should be we have everything on earth for all of us. so you see we as a specie create inequity. in the end you will not bring annything material with you. so what did you do to other and to your self and did it serve you? did you make a change to make this world better?would you like to come back here and start again?

Then I will tell them, 'I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work iniquity.'

http://bible.cc/matthew/7-23.htm

Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, 'Sir, open the door for us.' "But he will answer, 'I don't know you or where you come from.

"Then you will say, 'We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.'

"But he will reply, 'I don't know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!'

"There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out.

do you know where you are going to go back? if you do not know you better have made that place better.

Children are very involved with the moment, the Now. Everything is new, exciting. They are seeing the world, continually for the first time.

They may see a fire and, in trying to describe it they may say, "It is red, like a flower. It is warm, like the Sun. It exists for a while and then is gone, leaving behind ashes." But they are seeing and involving themselves in the concept of "fire."

As we age, we have seen so much that we just name events. We say 'fire' and dismiss the value, the depth of the "NOW" expereince. This can lead people into a lack of joy that surfaces as cynicism.

But, truly, age has little to do with this. I know people in their 80s and 90s who have a delightful, youthful outlook. I also know children who are filled with cynicism.

It is your outlook that is important. We create our world every time we wake up in the morning. There is always new, vibrant, exciting joy!

Also, I have studied research that was done on old people, trying to find a common denominator as to why certain people lived so long. It was not diet. Not exercise. Not wealth or poverty. Not whether they smoked, drank, ate the 'wrong foods', etc.

The people who aged gracefully and had the greatest longevity, were the people who enjoyed life! The people who sprang out of bed in the morning and followed their passion. Gardening. Charities. Art. Music. Whatever. Not only did they live longer, bit they were well-loved.

"Except ye become as children . . . . . "

When we are younger, we love life for all that ito offerus, even if we are hurtwe dont despair. However, when we become older sometimes we tend want more from this life and we get carry out to fulfil a deluded image of "happiness" (materialism)and we tend to neglect the many blessingswe have and thus become ungrateful and this leads to misery, no matter how many materialistic possesions we may have. we ask Allah to fulfilour lives and satisfy us with faith and make our lives dedcated to good, Ameen