Why do older individuals have greater control of their feelings?

Agreed the movie was great.

Your ideas are very much in line with Stoicism (I can't control the world, but I can control my reaction to it), the teachings of Jesus Christ (Matthew 6:25-34 lilies of the field), Buddha (Discourse on the Forms of Thought), ancient Hindu wisdom (lookup "Vāsanā" for starts) and modern Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Some people like to focus on one, but I have learned from them all.

It's perspective. Young people have little perspective, by definition. They can't predict how things will play out, or what the consequences of various actions will be on an emotional level.

You can try to gain perspective by doing things like reading realistic novels or realism-based historical studies (as opposed to the morality tales so in vogue today). I think this type of vicarious emotional absorption is the best that young people can do if they are actively trying to improve their perspective. But then you are at the mercy of how accurately the author or historian is portraying life -- older people can detect "false notes" more easily, and I see many false notes when I watch media or listen to music, some so egregiously false as to classify those works as deception. Then you can get into a situation where your emotional depth is getting worse with time because you are learning things vicariously that aren't accurately describing how life works.

But most people will eventually come to have enough authentic emotional experiences as to be able to gain some depth, e.g. perspective, even if they have consumed a lot of false vicarious experiences. In fact, those authentic experience might be incredibly jarring. I've heard that Ruskin had lots of sexual issues in his life because he was trained to work with sculptures of naked women with no pubic hair or realistic features, and was shocked when he saw an actual (non-idealized) nude woman. He may never have managed to purge himself of the false notes he absorbed as a young art student.

When a brand new CS student who has never written a program, or has only written a handful of exercises, are thrown into a large codebase, you expect them to make poor decisions. That's why their work is supervised. Not because they lack intelligence, but because they lack perspective. They are not thinking of how X will be maintained over time, or the consequences of creating some dependencies, etc. Over time, they acquire that perspective and make better decisions, at which point they need less supervision and can eventually supervise others.

So it is with everything that requires the exercise of judgement, whether writing code or handling your emotions or finances, or relationships. It takes time to acquire sufficient perspective to exercise good judgement. This is why historically nations had committees of elders who could block laws deemed reckless, and why traditionally young people were not allowed to vote and only gradually were entrusted with privileges that required the exercise of judgement such as signing contracts.

I would not label this control - more like they gain experience in recognizing their own feelings, and for that split second after they register and become aware of their feelings, they choose an appropriate response. I remember Obama being heckled at a speech by someone - you could clearly see his irritation by his pause, a second or two of deliberate delay/processing what he felt, and then just gave a somewhat calm response to the person in an effort to defuse the tension in the room.

Trump notoriously sucked at emotional regulation, and he's what you'd consider 'an older individual'. He too would give measured responses, it's just that they were more direct/less diplomatic than say Obama's.

I used to be more knee-jerky in my responses, say 20+ years ago in my 20's, but after a lot of screw ups in life w/relationships (close/intimate ones in particular), a failed marriage, 2 kids and a lot of therapy, both group and individual, I've made progress in being aware of my feelings and responding in a more measured way, so outwardly that appears as if I have "greater control".

The reality is I'm still a mess - I'm just responsible for my mess before I vomit it outward on someone else.

LinkedIn Learning actually has this great one hour or so video I just watched that covers this nicely, I think it's called "Emotional Intelligence"... Some say it predicts how you will fare career wise far more than being just technically adept/skilled.

It's a process of "finding oneself" and figuring out where we fit best. Mastering responses to our emotions is a life long process and we tend to end up "automagically" drawn to similar people, cultures, companies, relationships....

We don't care what your opinions are. We care about you following the site guidelines, which include things like "Be kind," "Don't fulminate", and "Eschew flamebait". Can you please stick to the rules? I'm sure you can find thoughtful ways to express your substantive views if you want to.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html