All this is just saying that you personally put more weight on the things that are better about later adulthood than early adulthood or adolescence. And that can be your choice, but it doesn’t have to be everyone’s choice.

You acknowledge that the health and friendships piece gets harder with age but push back against the idea that it inevitably gets worse. But averaged among all people, things will tend to get worse, and some people who actually experience that deterioration will conclude (as is their right) that things were better when health and friendships were easier.

But we also make new relationships as we get older. Is life better when you have a grandparent? Or when you have a grandchild?

These aren’t symmetrical. When you are a young person who loves your grandparents, you haven’t actually mourned a loss of a grandchild you personally knew. On the flip side, when you have a grandchild you might also view that relationship through the lens of a lost relationship with a deceased grandparent. In other words, only one of those experiences is 100% good, rather than a bittersweet mix of good and sad.

Not to mention, plenty of people will never have grandchildren. To them, the mourned loss of a grandparent is the end of that road. There’s no replacement on its way.

Put it this way: if given the opportunity to wake up 10 years in the past, in your body of 10 years ago, how positive or negative would you view that? Plenty of people would vote on different sides of that, and that’s OK to have different views based on one’s own experiences.

I interpret it to be more about the weight given to different pros and cons about different stages in life.

Some people really, really prize autonomy, and don’t get to experience that until pretty late in life. For these people, the stifling limits of adolescence, without their own money or independence from parents, can be miserable.

Some people really, really prize being free of responsibilities. To this group, sometimes adulthood comes with too many challenges and responsibilities that they find independence to be stifling.

Some care about physical health, which may correlate with younger ages.

Some love the ease of friendships in adolescence and early adulthood, and long for that dynamic when they realize that making new friends or maintaining existing friendships gets harder after 30, and even more so after 40.

Some feel very strongly about the loved ones they’ve lost since their childhood, and wish they could’ve appreciated those shared experiences more in the moment.

And we all have different experiences. I have no idea if my best years are ahead of me or behind me, but I could see an argument in either direction.

This all or nothing thinking often just turns into an excuse for doing nothing.

I can make a better world by making things better in my immediate vicinity, without dying for it. I can help one person at a time, and it might not scale to some kind of globally noticeable improvement, but it can still a difference to each of those people, and was worth whatever effort or sacrifice involved.

The arm is lit up from the bottom, totally doesn’t fit the rest of the lighting in the picture.