Here's Some Good News for Us Older Ones
The following was on LiveScience the other day. As one in the older category who often works with people in the younger category, I found the results more than a little interesting.

Older adults are more likely to see the glass as half full than half empty, a new study finds.

Researchers showed 20 young adults, aged 19 to 22, a series of positive, neutral and negative images like chocolate ice cream, an electrical outlet and a dead animal, respectively. A separate group of 20 older adults, aged 56 to 81, were shown the same images.

Older adults were less responsive to the unpleasant images.

“As a group, older adults are less likely to be depressed and less affected by negative or unpleasant information,” said Stacey Wood, a neuropsychologist from Scripps College in Claremont , Calif. who headed up the study.

It is unclear why our elders are more likely to view the world through rose-colored glasses. It might have to do with the experiences they gain or the biological changes that occur as they age.

A study in 2005 found that older people see "the big picture" better. Other research has shown that optimists live longer.
--Link

At first the idea does seem counterintuitive. It is much clearer, for example, that the long-term picture is a lot shorter and probably a lot more uncertain for someone in the older age group. What have they to be optimistic about?

Maybe, just maybe, they have learned that life is what happens to you while you are making other plans so as time gets shorter in some way or another they begin to look at what life is doing. Maybe it's because there is a perspective about the "bigger picture" that comes from seeing an ebb and flow of life and events.

And maybe it is because the optimists are the ones who live longer.

In any case, that's what people are discovering. I tend to think it is related to what author Bruce Barton described in this quote:

Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.

And one more
An item came across today that gives me even more reason for hope:

People who take at least three daytime naps a week lasting 30 minutes or longer cut their risk of dying from a heart attack by 37 per cent, according to a new study by a team of American and Greek researchers.

Regular siestas apparently lower stress, which is frequently associated with heart disease, the scientists reported in Archives of Internal Medicine, a leading medical journal.
--Link