I find that most of us construct more accurate and compelling stories as we age. We learn to spot our strengths and weaknesses, the recurring patterns of our behavior, the core desire line that will always propel our life forward. We go back and reinterpret the past, becoming more forgiving and more appreciative. “Calm is a function of retrospective clarification,” the Swarthmore literature professor Philip Weinstein writes, “a selective ordering after the fact.”
