The human brain is amazing and inspiring. Its intricacy and ability set us apart from other creatures of our planet. It has capability to keep functioning, and growing, throughout our life cycle. Only when we choose to ignore it, or fail to use it, does it slip into dormancy and slowly wither. Nurture your mind as you did your children. When they thought they would "never get it" at school, you encouraged them and stuck with them until they mastered their assignments. Relish new mental challenges and give yourself that same patient coaching. You may need to read technical information several times before you really understand it. Spend free hours exploring your computer and researching what it does and how it can best work for you. Work on crossword puzzles and word games to maintain your memory and expand your vocabulary. Learn about a new subject which has always interested you but which you never had time to thoroughly explore: history, astronomy, holistic health, genealogy, horse race handicapping, geography, anything that catches your fancy. The goal is not subject you study but mental exercise it affords which will, in turn, improve your mood, provide daily excitement of new discoveries, and allow you to feel productive and valuable to your prime audience: yourself.

3. "It's time to start acting my age."

What does that mean? Shall we allow our age to be determined by an arbitrary, man-made calendar or by how we feel? Some of us seem "old" by fifty. We give up trying new things, we slow down our activity, we stop thinking creatively. Many of us at sixty or seventy feel as we have always done and are shocked when we look closely in a mirror and see that we have changed. How could our appearance be so different when we still see ourselves as young and vibrant as ever? If we can act age we feel, calendar age no longer matters. If we love to dance, should we stop because of a date on a calendar? If we like to work, should we be forced to retire when we have so much to offer? If we feel at our best in shorter skirts and high heels, must we start changing our wardrobe to present image of a dowager? If we like to play rough and tumble sports, should we move to sidelines and let "young set" take over? Are we doomed to wear shawls and scarves and sensible shoes when we don't feel any more "sensible" that we did for past 50 years? No way! Let our inner attitude shine in public as brightly as it burns within our minds.

Human beings have few limitations. The limits that exist are often self-imposed. A positive attitude about yourself, your refusal to allow calendar to stifle your physical and mental reach, and frequent self-examination of myths of aging to which you may be falling prey, can transform destructive social concept of aging into bright new opportunities for change, growth, and fulfillment.

The only time veneer of personal exemption is cracked is when we are diagnosed with a terminal illness or undergo a life-threatening event such as a heart attack or stroke. The response is one of disbelief: this happens to other people, not to me. As long as we feel relatively healthy and can get around independently, we fail to internalize danger in which we now live, convinced that we will be one to beat odds.

If only someone had "come clean" with truth, we would have known as children what we know so clearly now: mentally stable individual (versus those who live with recurrent dream of supposed peace of suicide) is never "ready to die." It doesn't matter how old we've grown nor how debilitated our bodies have become. Our spirit, our mental processes, our "soul," if you will, burns unswervingly bright. We may have lapses of memory or prefer to spend our time in recollections of past glory, but we are still us. It is that belief in permanency of our core that sets us apart from all other species on our planet. Our unwillingness to accept that we will ever cease to be leads us to religions that codify belief into comforts of resurrection or reincarnation. We stare at void and fail to accept that it is our personal fate. We toss on our deathbed and echo words of English Queen, Elizabeth I: "All my possessions for a moment of time."

We can reach out to children in our lives and expose secret we have at long last discovered. They may nod in agreement but they really don't believe it. The idea of immortality is highly personal: death happens to other people. It may cause us grief but we are untouchable. Now that we know truth, we can live comfortably on, as long as possible we expect, and death, when it comes, will carry only an immense astonishment: this cannot be happening to me.