What makes a person increase or decrease in ability to enjoy life?

Question

Up tp the age of 30 or beyond, poetry of many kinds.. gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took great delight in SHakespeare
Formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. I have tried to read Shakespeare, and found it to be so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also lost any taste for pictures or for music... I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me exquisite delight which it formerly did... My mind seems to have become a machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts. but why this should have cause that atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend I cannot concieve... the loss of these tastes, is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.. Charles Darwin's autobiography

Answer 1

I find Darwin's observation here rather depressing.

Getting older usually signifies more aches, pains, memory problems, and other age-related discomforts.But that does not necessarily signify a decline in the ability to enjoy life. but individual happiness found that as people get older, they become happier, not sadder. I think that as we get older we seem to be able to know, through years of experience, what kinds of external events increase or decrease our positive and negative emotions.Therefore, they achieve a better 'emotional balance' by selecting people, activities and situations that will minimize negative and maximize positive emotions. Hey ... we learn from life!

Here is something that also is interesting ... Among adults who reach the age of 100, are nearly all very religious and it serves as a support system. There is very little depression among centenarians!

Answer 2

Realization of your own insignificance decreases it.
Accepting your insignificance and making life fun anyway increases it again. I guess being oblivious to the insignificance would keep it increased as well. The whole "ignorance is bliss" stuff.

Answer 3

Religion.

Answer 4

life