I have a good friend who says, "We're all just dodging bullets." It seems to me the trick to living a good life is to try to move away from the gun you turn on yourself.
There is a thing called the death wish, a literal thing. It doesn't mean you want to die. It just means however we're built, as we get into these years, some inner part of you does begin to accept the fact that you're heading towards the end, and there's a peace that comes with that.
You get kinder when you get into my age range. You think back to how really unkind you were, and how cynical you were and how you tossed things away and you tossed people away, and you didn't care because you were climbing some mountain that you thought you needed to be on top of.