I think the part about each decade getting better is largely about choice. My twenties were easily better than my teens, and my thirties certainly better than my twenties, but after that I started to get handed more losses, especially around health, and deaths of friends and family, that slowed the upward curve. Aging was setting in. But then, so was maturity, I like to think. That is one of the perks of getting past the teen years that is still ahead of you—-youth is not everything.