Aging Successfully

Lemme first say, I have no reason to assume either that I am or that I am not aging successfully. I am still working and earning a living, I have been married for 47.5 years (half years begin counting again in the Last Quarter, as they had in the toddler years). I have three children with whom I have regular contact. There are 6 grandchildren who claim direct kinship with me, and GuntherDog hates me and loves his Mother.There's, also, some cardiac arrhythmias, a bit of neuropathy in both legs, and an intermittently present and annoying post-eating bloat. ............................................................. ..........................................................

This all comes to mind, this morning, after having received a hyperlink from a colleague. She had listened to another oldster, 78 year old George Vaillant who years ago, as a young Psychiatrist, began studying Harvard men in classes in the early 40's. She sent this short interview piece along suggesting that it said interesting things about successful aging. And interesting, they were. Don't drink or smoke. Good genes are important. Stay married, you'll learn survival skills and you won't be lonely. And, as Monty Python or some crazy Brit would have it,  try to "look on the good side of life." Oh! And be the kind of person who gets into Harvard in the early 1940's.
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Coincidentally, had dinner, last night, with my friends Miltie and Ruth. Miltie and I were discussing the changes that might occur with on-line courses that seem to be slowly coming of age; one of M and my kids is involved as a VP in one of them. Conversation (associations CAN be loose in the Last Quarter ... your "bean" rattling around in the helmet/in the skull apparently takes a toll!) turned to the common experience of kids going away to out-of-state schools rather than going to the home-grown variety that can be much less expensive. I had wanted to write a book about this almost 30 years ago when one of my kids' college counsellors proved to know dittly-squat about the quality of schools. Guy was quite thoughly confused about such matters. In my thinking at that time, it occurred to me that most colleges are rated either by objective measures of how good the kids were going in or coming out ... in terms of $, success, .... It struck me that it was something akin to measuring the quality of a restaurant by its patrons ... Mercedez outside? well healed and staid. Lamborghini's outside? Fast and rich. Ford Taurus's and Dodge miniwagons parked in parking lot, behind? A little overweight and tired from chasing rugrats! ........................................ Any case, kids wanna go away and maybe they wanna make their parents pay! .......................................  And measuring Harvard Men may have advantages ... but moreso for the Harvard Men then for studies. Ah! The reality is that research is expensive and local samples are far less so and most convenient. ............................... Enough to say that for those of you Fourth Quarter Fighters who believe in reincarnation ... Lookee, here ... Next time you come this way: Don't drink or smoke. Go to Harvard and marry a rich Cliffey or, if you're a Cliffey, stick with Harvard and MIT and Yale and (you get it). Don't drive a Ford Taurus and start out young with AA; it does seem to work for Alcoholis but why should the rest of us poor Souls suffer unnecessarily. ............................................ I'm gonna go try to teach GuntherDog how to howl at the full moon over Philly.