Sober

Once we enter life's third and final act realism tends to predominate. By now we know that many of the aspirations we had in youth have gone unfulfilled which need not be a bad thing. Hopefully wisdom has displaced those ideas as not having been right for us. Some might have been, but life got in the way. 

The human animal is complicated, unsettled and always wants something else. It is as if being where we are right now is somehow wrong and one day all will be fixed. But of course it won't. 

Existential angst is built into the wiring and the more quiet and still we are, the more it commands our attention. We can drown it out with activity but it is always there like a low hum.

Despite getting older, we might prefer the sobriety to being less settled and always chasing something which we can't quite grasp.