A breakup stings sharply when young, yet we lack the decades of ingrained patterns that shape older adults.
For youth, each trauma is magnified because it is an intense encounter in a limited set of experiences. Without a broader perspective to gauge importance or offer insight, a singular event can derail someone.
But, let’s not confuse a lot of experience with a breadth of experience: many older people have numerous similar experiences that form a rut, a singular perspective. When encountering adversity or trauma, it is not a broad perspective that offers wisdom and reprieve, but instead a the ingrained, embodied repetition of decades offers habitual bodily monotony that appears as resilience.
This is something youth do not have: the tedium of repetition as a survival mechanism.