I am energetic and engaged. I continue to run a business, travel internationally, attend lectures and give them, read, exercise and enjoy time with family and friends. Some of the emotions generally associated with aging such as depression and denial are just not part of my make-up. Just like everything else in life, I believe we choose how we age. From personal experience, I know it is possible to face the aging process with a healthy mixture of acceptance and enthusiasm. Sure, things change. We lose people we love. We have physical limitations, but we can all choose to be happy, active and playful in the present.

The people who make this choice can be called the chronologically gifted. They regard their age as a gift, the seal of a life-long journey for which they are profoundly grateful. It’s a journey that began at birth and progressed along the way to create a personal legacy that immortalizes them in the memory of others.

In the face of their own mortality, the chronologically gifted make the choice to live with significance in the here and know. Even as they seize control over the reality of aging. Somewhere in the mix, they lose their concern over whether they live to see five more years, ten more years or thirty. Yet as a group, they still tend to live longer and better lives than those who constantly preoccupy themselves with the fear of getting older.