Our brains are driven to seek calmness as we age. Columbia University social psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson claims that calmness is central to happiness. As we age, she says, “happiness becomes less the high-energy, totally-psyched experience of a teenager partying while his parents are out of town, and more the peaceful, relaxing experience of an overworked mom who’s been dreaming of that hot bath all day. The latter isn’t less ‘happy’ than the former—it’s a different way of understanding what happiness is.”
