"Do we grow more courageous as we grow up? Cicero says that old age is more confident and courageous than youth because the old have come to disregard death. Sometimes, perhaps, but it's often rather because we recognize that everyone else is as terrified of being found wanting, and faking it, as we are. Those who looked braver than you felt were feeling what you did, they just whistled louder in the dark. The confidence that arises when you grasp that is itself a source of pleasure. You may begin to understand what Kant meant by saying you have duties to yourself, and the basis of these is dignity, preserving the idea of humanity in your own person (Lectures on Pedagogy, pp. 475-6). Life will still surprise you — if it doesn't you are lost — but you learn to trust your own responses to it. You've begun to construct a story about how the pieces of your life fit together. The story will be revised more than once, and become increasingly coherent, if not always increasingly true, giving shape to your life as it goes on. Places and objects will make it resonate. (The street corner on which you couldn't help crying heartbroken over a love affair you can now recount as an interesting anecdote. The basket you bought from a market woman who taught you something about her continent. The painted bird made by a friend who ended the friendship twenty years ago for reasons neither of you would remember if you met on the street today.)
"The ability to see your life as the whole it has become allows you to see the strengths with which you've lived it, and develop a sense of your own character. For integrity is never static; it's too easy to lose for that. It's rather a matter of determination: You've begun to figure out what sort of person you want to be, and you resolve to work harder to become it. In doing this you care far less about what people think of you, though you may be more useful to them. Every psychologist who talks about life cycles talks about what Erikson called generativity: the satisfaction that comes from giving back to the world the better things it gave to you, and especially of nurturing the young. You may discover the pleasure of generosity. You can give a gift or an honest compliment without fearing it will be viewed as flattery, you no longer view constant criticism as a sign of intelligence."
