Youth breeds a certain self-preservation instinct. It is understood on some primal level that one's whole life is ahead, and death or disfigurement now will result in decades of life unlived. At my age another feeling sets in. One knows life will be over soon, that the body will revert to little more than dust and a story. Then only a story. Then an old story. Then a nothing. That tends to nip most fears in the bud.
