Both shocking and obvious to anyone who has watched the traditional life paths evaporate as youth have hit ages that in the past have been filled with milestone

Both shocking and obvious to anyone who has watched the traditional life paths evaporate as youth have hit ages that in the past have been filled with milestones, only to be left in the dust - and blamed for not having achieved the same milestones as if it is a personal failing. Combine with being hyper connected to the highlight reels of other people’s lives (real or not), and you have perhaps the biggest gap between performance and expectations in history. And our “leadership” has been asleep at the switch (I say “our” to refer to leadership across all western nations who have invariably pursued endless growth, individualism over collectivism, and massive asset inflation). Our response to the great financial crisis took a few years for the unintended consequences to be obvious but 2014-2017 does seem to be the right timeframe. > This means that the same path was followed for people who were born in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. All of these cohorts saw mid-life crises with peak unhappiness in midlife. Claims have been made that the mid-life hump was linked to changes in what people expect from life over time or set points against which individuals calibrate how their life is unfolding. The pattern was even apparent in apes, leading some to speculate that the life course of well-being is linked to psychological traits common to primates. > That was then. And now everything has changed. The hump shapes and U-shapes in age have disappeared into the ether. Now, young adults (on average) are the least happy people. Unhappiness now declines with age, and happiness now rises with age—and this change seems to have started around 2017.