4 ms·

I don't think it's right to say that people "just forget the negative stuff". To me, the difference in getting older is that I can assign meaning to my sufferin

I don't think it's right to say that people "just forget the negative stuff". To me, the difference in getting older is that I can assign meaning to my suffering. Whet you're suffering as a kid, it seems pointless and painful. As you get older, you have time to see others experience pain and also play through enough hypothetical scenarios that you can find meaning in your own suffering. This, I believe, is one of the secrets to being happy. It is why we often hear stories of resilient cancer survivors and mountaineers who never gave up. Finding purpose and meaning in your suffering is what makes it bearable. This is also a compelling argument for the merits of religion. I don't think people "forget" pain. They just earn a perspective on the pain that doesn't cause them pain. Usually this perspective includes some link to the present in opposition to a potentially worse outcome which makes the past sound rosier to an outsider. Tangential point: you don't always get credit for toking things seriously, but you do always get credit (in one form or another) for being lighthearted, and these two things are not orthogonal. I believe this is also why our narratives shift.

prophesi 9y ago
> Finding purpose and meaning in your suffering is what makes it bearable. Yeah, I'd say we don't forget the negative stuff, but instead attribute meaning and purpose to it. You even see this in the example they use to explain how we forget the negative. I think their socioemotional selectivity theory is really just a restructuring of the negative into something positive; a sort of defense mechanism we learn to use as we get older in life. The mechanism isn't a simple "forgive and forget"; we wouldn't gain nearly as much from that.
kough 9y ago
> As you get older, you have time to see others experience pain and also play through enough hypothetical scenarios that you can find meaning in your own suffering. This, I believe, is one of the secrets to being happy. It is why we often hear stories of resilient cancer survivors and mountaineers who never gave up. Finding purpose and meaning in your suffering is what makes it bearable. I think this is what the McAdams is describing when he speaks about "redemption stories".

prophesi 9y ago

> Finding purpose and meaning in your suffering is what makes it bearable. Yeah, I'd say we don't forget the negative stuff, but instead attribute meaning and purpose to it. You even see this in the example they use to explain how we forget the negative. I think their socioemotional selectivity theory is really just a restructuring of the negative into something positive; a sort of defense mechanism we learn to use as we get older in life. The mechanism isn't a simple "forgive and forget"; we wouldn't gain nearly as much from that.

kough 9y ago

> As you get older, you have time to see others experience pain and also play through enough hypothetical scenarios that you can find meaning in your own suffering. This, I believe, is one of the secrets to being happy. It is why we often hear stories of resilient cancer survivors and mountaineers who never gave up. Finding purpose and meaning in your suffering is what makes it bearable. I think this is what the McAdams is describing when he speaks about "redemption stories".