You are a member in good standing of an elite group dedicated to the proposition that the pursuit of happiness is for suckers. “Baby Boomers: The Gloomiest Generation,” is how the Pew Research Center put it a few years ago after conducting a survey.

But some of you seem to have a secret. You are getting happier as you get older. Or if not happier, at least more content. “Why don’t things bother me anymore?” one colleague asked recently.

As it happens, there is a lot of that going around, psychologists who work with older people say. “As most people age, they become much more accepting of themselves,” said Jerrold Lee Shapiro, an author and professor of psychology at Santa Clara University. They also become more empathetic to others, he said.

So what gives? If we are so gloomy, why do we sometimes seem so chipper? Well, when Pew surveyed more than 2,400 adults in 2008, it did find a lot of discontent, but that was when it asked people to do things like compare their standard of living with that of their parents or talk about keeping up with the cost of living.