Families with wise elders have better chances at survival and therefore have more descendants. As we age we reminisce almost as though to aid us in seeing the big picture. We tend to forget the details that block out the grand vistas. We wonder about the implications, the meaning of what happened. Looking back at our life we see what was not apparent before.
Events look very different when viewed in the context of a lifetime.
The story engrams with which we build these realizations and understanding have been sharpened by decades of practice. We have learned to put in a nutshell the important conclusions that can be drawn from experience. And we have reamed to develop the summarizing story engrams with subordinate story engrams to describe complexities, thereby giving us a greater understanding of causality. We have moved from the information age of our youth with its higher test scores, to the knowledge age of the middle years, to the integration stage of the elder. In this last stage we are distanced from the turmoil and hormonal tensions of youth, and from the competitiveness of the middle years.