Includes bibliographical references and index.

Machine generated contents note: -- Introduction -- Part I: Character, Character Strength, and Continuity Over Time -- Chapter 1. The Oak Tree and the U-Bend: Age, Well-Being, and the Experience of Me-ness -- Chapter 2. A Look at the Grownup Years -- Chapter 3. Character Strengths and Virtues -- Chapter 4. Older Age in the Olden Days: A History of Aging in the Western World -- Part II: The Virtues -- Chapter 5. The Virtue of Transcendence: Beyond the Self -- Chapter 6. The Underappreciated Virtue of Humor: You Can't Spell Joy Without the Oy -- Chapter 7. The Virtues of Humanity and Social Justice: Do Unto Others -- Chapter 8. The Virtue of Courage: If I Only Had the Nerve -- Chapter 9. The Virtue of Wisdom: Knowing What We Don't Know -- Chapter 10. The Virtue of Temperance: Moderation in All Things (almost) -- Chapter 11. The Virtue of Passing on to the Next Generation: The Bridge Between Past and Future -- Part III Putting the Virtues to Work -- Chapter 12. When Older Doesn't Feel Lighter: Loneliness and Social Isolation -- Chapter 13. The Virtue of Appreciating the Cycle of Life in Elders -- Appendix: Vintage Readers Book Club Readings.

"Contrary to common wisdom and the fears of mid-lifers, our sense of well-being actually goes up in older age, even in the presence of illness or disability. Lighter as We Go is the first book to explore how and why that is, drawing on positive psychology concepts of character strengths and virtues"--

"The fears of aging have been one long cascading domino effect through the years: twenty year-olds dread thirty; forty year-olds fear fifty; sixty fears seventy, and so it goes. And there is something to worry about, though it isn't what you'd expect: research shows that having a bad attitude toward aging when we're young is associated with poorer health when we're older. These worries tend to peak in midlife; but in Lighter as We Go, Mindy Greenstein and Jimmie Holland show us that, contrary to common wisdom, our sense of well-being actually increases with our age--often even in the presence of illness or disability. For the first time, Greenstein and Holland--on a joint venture between an 85 year-old and a fifty year-old--explore positive psychology concepts of character strengths and virtues to unveil how and why, through the course of a lifetime, we learn who we are as we go. Drawing from the authors' own personal, intergenerational friendship, as well as a broad array of research from many different areas--including social psychology, anthropology, neuroscience, humanities, psychiatry, and gerontology--Lighter as We Go introduces compassion, justice, community, and culture to help calm our cascading fears of aging"--