VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

published “The Happiness Curve,” told the Guardian. But “the same ambition that made us status hungry makes us hungry for more status. We’re on the hedonic treadmill.”

With age, a lovely who-cares-ness attaches to metaphorical — and, for Pete’s sake, literal — treadmills.

“You hear people say, ‘I don’t feel the need to check those boxes anymore’ or ‘I don’t care that much what other people think,’” Rauch says.

You also get more ironic, which Generation X, the oldest of whom are 59, is known for, too. But now irony doesn’t mean donning kooky leisure suits; it’s a type of amused equanimity.

Then there’s the other big score of later adulthood: friends. According to Gallup, olds were more likely than youngs to answer “yes” when asked if they have a friend they can call when in need.

The correspondence between social time and happiness is clear. The more time Americans spend with family and friends, the more contentment they report — and the less stress. Our self-reported mood improves with each hour of social time we spend in a day, but olds need just three hours a day of social life to get started on a good mood.

Admittedly, at least some of the ease of older Americans stems from how many of them — nearly 80% of those over 65 — own their homes. Medicare helps, and so does Social Security, a superb form of universal basic income that’s adjusted for inflation.

(Donald Trump — the worst president of all time, for those with cultural memory loss — suggested on CNBC that he’d cut Medicare and Social Security. He’s 77, and the exception that proves the rule that olds are happy people.)

In “Breaking the Age Code,” Becca Levy argues that one key to being happier in old age is to stop worrying about old age. If you remember, for example, that many kinds of cognition actually improve with age, Levy writes, you can savor your enhanced skills. Among these are pattern recognition and the ability to think about thinking, or what’s called “metacognition.” Metacognition allows for detachment from stressful thoughts.

Metacognition as a gateway to DGAF (don’t give a fig)! Thanks, science.

So maybe, as a duty to our country, my cohort should reach out to younger friends and mentor them in our chill. Maybe if we teach them the way of repose they’ll start saying, “I love being around the seniors! They keep me old!”

Or maybe they’ll just keep on judging us for our graying hair and dated jokes. But that’s just fine. Because we don’t care what they think.