Large affairs are not performed by muscle, speed, nimbleness, but by reflection, character, judgment. In age, these qualities are not diminished but augmented. — Julius Cicero (106–43 BC) at age 62 If we don’t want wrinkles and grey hair, we’ll have to die young! As this is not something worth considering, let us examine the alternative: aging. Not only aging as anyone who is born begins to age, but going past our mid-century into the second half of our lives, and it is truly a second half since as a population we are tending to live longer and longer. There are about 80,000 people living in the United States today who are over 100 years old. Until very recently I thought of myself as middle-aged, that was until I realized that it is my children who are middle-aged. I have just hit 82, and I mean HIT, for it was with a bang and a shudder that I plunged into my ninth decade. I have begun to notice that formerly flat surfaces like the street leading to our home have suddenly become small hills, that newspapers are reducing the size of their print on a yearly basis and that everyone around me has started to mumble. And those aren’t the worst changes we face. Yes, we are forgetting everything! From the name of our best friend the moment we have to introduce her to the phone number we were dialing two seconds ago. We think we have Alzheimer’s every time we misplace our keys, wallet or the piece of paper upon which was written our list of things to remember. I don’t remember my parents worrying about this loss of memory as much as all my friends and I do. Think of how much more is stored in our brains than a generation ago. We are overloaded with information, much of it not pertinent to our daily lives. I know that I am more interested in and more knowledgeable about a host of significant as well as insignificant facts. I remember how I didn’t have a key to our house, as the front door was never locked. It didn’t need to be. No one had a security system, and we left the keys in our cars when we did errands. When I was 18, on a visit to New York I walked at night in Central Park holding hands with a boyfriend — it was safe. Later, as a social worker, I worked in Harlem, doing home studies for foster care — I went alone, and it never occurred to me to be afraid. So the world has become less safe, but on the other hand, the world is offering us more opportunities than it did to our mothers. Bewildered as we may be by the overload of information, we can take advantage of it. Some of the more fascinating recent research has been on brain function. What has been discovered is that our brains can keep growing until the day we die, if we keep them active and challenged. We can grow neurons and new synapses every time we do something that requires a difficult mental effort, like learning a new language. I decided to start piano lessons in my late 60s, even though my mother and piano teacher said that I was hopeless at age 8. We need to become mentors, advisors and confidants to the younger generation, we need to be available to the members of our communities who could use a helping hand, a friendly suggestion, an intelligent perspective. Studies have shown that volunteering only one or two hours a week improves our immune response and increases longevity. Being part of our own communities as a functional member fulfills our basic genetic predisposition to belong to a group. Having friends you care for and who care for you are as important for mental health as food and exercise is important for physical health. So go out where you can interact with people, meet for a cup of coffee, invite someone to share takeout with you if you don’t like to cook, walk with someone, go to a movie, do something together with others, and you will be not only enriched but healthier and live longer. You will have PMZ: post menopausal zest. If you’re there for others, they will be there for you. But you start!