"At nearly 80, with a scattering of medical and surgical problems, non disabling, I feel glad to be alive - "I'm glad I'm not dead!" sometimes bursts out of me when the weather is perfect.
I am sorry I have wasted(and still waste)so much time; I am sorry to be as agnonizingly shy at 80 as I was at 20; I am sorry that I speak no languages but my mother tongue and that I have not traveled or experienced other cultures as widely as I should have done.
At 80, the specter of dementia or stroke looms. A third of one's
contemporaries are dead, and many more, with profound mental and physical damage, are trapped in a tragic and minimal existance. At 80 the marks of decay are all too visible. One's reactions are a little slower, names more frequently elude me, and one's energies must be husbanded, but even so, one may often feel full of energy and life and not at all "old".
My father, who lived to 94, often said that the 80's had been one of the most enjoyable decades of his life. He felt, as I begin to feel, not shrinking but an enlargement of mental life and perspective.
At 80, one can take a long view and have a vivid, lived sense of history not possible at an earlier age. I can imagine, feel in my bones, what a centry is like, which I could not do when I was 40 or 60.I think of old age as a time of leasure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of the earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and bind the thoughts and feelings of lifetime together. I am looking forward to being 80" - NYTimes by Oliver Sacks, July 6, 2013.

As you can see in the dates above and the ealier Gina Kolata's
report, I can feel how relieved he must be feeling now. Old age, money, status, and power are not as importand as your own
mind set or life style. Wish to all of you a joyful old age.