People want to think that they improve over time. To reduce cognitive dissonance of possibly having regressed instead, they label the current status positively with such words as "maturity," or "enlightenment" for realizing 'inevitable' limitations of one's previously promising trajectory...To be able to label the present as inferior to a prior occasion, however, produces dysphoria on the one hand, but maintains a certain standard and perhaps reality on the other hand, compared to the apparent shifting standards of positive labels. Of course, such labeling of regression could be done by either those people who know themselves rather well and prefer reality, or are simply pessimistic or with low self-esteem; unfortunately, the manifest behavior/attitude finds it difficult to tease apart the pessimists from the wise.