As I get older what calms me isn't what you'd normally call happiness. And although I do things that you'd normally call "making me happy" like eating a nice meal or seeing friends, the thing that is most calming is the sense that everything seems to have some sort of perspective that can be invoked.
Once you've come across enough life events, along with perspectives like the one in the article, you tend to feel a degree of autonomy about how you see things. You can focus on the (really) big picture of things, where you're an insignificant short-lived ball of carbon and water, or you can warm yourself on the details of why it is you think little babies are cute.
There's also a sense that nothing is really new anymore. Whatever someone throws at me, I can fit it somewhere in my worldview. Part of that is reading a lot of stuff such as HN, part of it is meeting a lot of people can getting their view.
Once you've come across enough life events, along with perspectives like the one in the article, you tend to feel a degree of autonomy about how you see things. You can focus on the (really) big picture of things, where you're an insignificant short-lived ball of carbon and water, or you can warm yourself on the details of why it is you think little babies are cute.
There's also a sense that nothing is really new anymore. Whatever someone throws at me, I can fit it somewhere in my worldview. Part of that is reading a lot of stuff such as HN, part of it is meeting a lot of people can getting their view.