Yeah, I can see how trauma or a near-death experience would lead to an awakening, to a larger, less parochial perspective. That's all fine and admirable.

But I'm not sure it addresses my more general point about the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the wear and tear in daily life, the stress that is life itself, which turns a relatively naive and carefree creature (the child) into a wiser and relatively jaded one (the adult). That might also be reversible, I suppose, but only by more sinister or at least less obviously admirable measures.