My wife and I have been married for more than half of our respective lives. During that time, we’ve experienced some very difficult challenges, the greatest of which may be learning how to keep a marriage intact through thick and thin. Lately, we’ve been tested in a big way, and despite the pain, we are grateful it’s not worse.

And we are better than ever.

To get here, Janice and I have each had to develop a spiritual and psychological approach to maintaining our mental health, especially as we age. Nobody gets through life untouched. We each have our way of dealing with the struggles, and together we find love in the middle.

Suffering is a fact of life

I’ve been thinking about suffering a lot lately. More in a reflective, grateful way that sounds like, “Wow, I’m glad I got through that okay.”

I’ve found meaning in my suffering after looking in all the wrong places.

Reading books made a huge difference in learning how to be grateful. The wisest among us have been telling us this for thousands of years. More importantly, they left us ways to live through difficult times without letting them destroy us.

I remember the tsunami of painful emotions that crushed me when our family dog died in my arms. I was a junior in high school. I cried for a week. Anyone who has loved deeply knows the full weight of losing someone or something we love.

Finding gratitude takes time

Maybe we aren’t grateful that the painful thing happened. Maybe gratitude comes later, when we begin to see what suffering taught us. When we give ourselves time to reflect, accept reality, and find peace.

Looking back on the many things I did to test my parents, and the same things our sons did to test us, much of it makes more sense now. Humans are meaning-seeking beings. For me, the meaning I derive from trudging through several treacherous hell storms earlier in life is that they made me wiser.

I learned patience, steadfastness, acceptance, compassion, forgiveness, and unconditional love. I would never have chosen some of the experiences that taught me those lessons, but I can still be grateful for what they eventually revealed.

Family is a domain that tests us

Families can be a real mess. I can be grateful for all of the rip tides I found in my gene pool. I feel sorry for those among us who have yet to forgive their parents for whatever their misgivings.

Forgiving parents requires forgiving ourselves.

Children test every parent. Later in life, the tables turn, and parents begin testing their children, as many of us are experiencing now. No matter what our children or my Mother do that I don’t like, I always love them unconditionally. I’m immensely grateful to have learned that.

We have dear friends who still have children in high school while also caring for aging parents. Both fathers depend heavily on their adult children. One Mother has died. The other lives in a nursing home for people with Alzheimer’s disease.

How can my friend be grateful for the weekends when he takes his father to Saturday evening Mass, drives him home, bathes him, cleans him, and makes sure he is safely in bed? He does it the same way his wife can be grateful that her father moved into their guest bedroom. It’s the same way Janice and I get through our toughest times: faith, love, and devotion.

I was recently describing to a friend how my faith, my spiritual approach to life, is every bit as important as my mental health toolkit. One is not better than the other. They work together, just as mind, body, and spirit somehow work together far beyond my understanding.

Wiser people before us can reveal the way

Across history, people facing circumstances far worse than mine found this to be true as well. Ancient Egyptians understood this. Their spiritual ideal of ma’at taught that gratitude helped keep the heart light and life in balance. Hathor, goddess of joy, was associated with remembering the gifts that remained even after loss. Isis carried a related message: after mourning Osiris's murder, she gathered what had been broken and helped restore life from death.

Gratitude did not erase grief. It helped transform it.

At the Last Supper, knowing suffering lay ahead, Jesus gave thanks before sharing the bread and wine. The Apostle Paul, writing while imprisoned, expressed gratitude and described learning to be content whether he had plenty or almost nothing. Elsewhere, he instructed believers to give thanks in all circumstances.

Nearly two thousand years later, Jewish writer Etty Hillesum faced Nazi persecution and eventual deportation. Surrounded by death and uncertainty, she wrote in her diary that she remained grateful to God for choosing her heart, in those times, to experience everything it had experienced. German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, imprisoned for resisting Hitler and later executed, wrote from prison that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.

None of these people taught that suffering feels good

Gratitude is not pretending tragedy is a blessing while we are being crushed by it. It is not denial. It is not spiritual anesthesia. It is a way of refusing to allow suffering to have the final word.

At this stage of life, I’m learning that gratitude sometimes requires time. I can hate what happened, grieve what was lost, cry when I need to cry, and still ask a different question when I am ready: What has this experience taught me about how to live?

That is where gratitude becomes more than saying thank you for the good things.

Sometimes the deepest gratitude comes from realizing the tough stuff didn’t finish us. It formed us. It gives life meaning if we’re willing to see it that way.

This is Ford. It’s short for Clifford. He’s three. He is with his baby sister, Penelope, who is one. We had them for the Labor Day weekend. Being with children is a blessing, humbling, and exhausting.

After breakfast this past Saturday morning, and a quick photography session where he says, “Cheeeeeese” with a smile, Ford and I took his new bike to the park a few houses down the street. It was a cool early-September morning in the desert, but the sun was rising fast, and the heat was approaching 100 degrees. We’ve got plenty of water, hats, sun cover, and energy to let loose on our early adventure.

Unusually, no one else was at the park when we arrived. It turned out that another grandfather, his son, and his two sons, ages five and three, were in full play mode. As soon as we made eye contact, the five-year-old boy approached us and said, “Hey, you want a hug?”

“Sure,” I replied while giving Ford a loving nudge to indicate we can trust this dude.

Let’s call the boy Adam. Adam hugged Alex as if he’d had practice. It suggested the family gives Adam enough space to explore the world, and maybe even walk to this part from ten houses down without his mom or dad getting arrested and prosecuted by an ignoramus.

After the hug, we play on the massive outdoor jungle gym, with flooring made of thick layers of wood chips. We climb stairs, slide down multiple slides, ascend a rock climbing wall, and run around as healthy children would.

The three boys are standing on top of the world as far as they were concerned. I approached, looked up at them, and admired their courage to stand so close to the edge. As I got close, the five-year-old proclaimed, “Hey, you’re old. Are you the granddad or the dad?”

“Hey. Did you call me old?” I replied with a huge smile. “You think I’m old, huh? How come?”

“Your face. It’s all wrinkly.”

“Thank you. Just remember, age is a state of mind because even old dudes like me have fun playing, don’t we?”

The kid smiled and shrugged indifferently. “I guess so.”

We kept playing and had a blast.

Meeting children where they are is essential for their development

We can easily forget what’s going on in the mind and body of a child, especially during the first seven years of life. Our grandchildren are completely dependent on us when we have them.

The Harvard Center on the Developing Child and CDC Developmental Milestones show that at age three, a child’s brain develops at an extraordinary speed. It is building more than one million new neural connections every second, strengthening useful pathways and pruning others.

At the same time, vocabulary, coordination, problem-solving, emotional control, imagination, and social skills are expanding rapidly as experience literally helps shape the developing brain.

And who could not be grateful to know some of these things as we remember what it is like to be a child? Because short of that, how could we otherwise give children what they need and want most of us? Time, devotion, love, attention, and loving correction, as the child tests everything they encounter, especially shiny, expensive things.

Not stuff.

I remember what it is like to be a child

I feel my inner child when I ride a bicycle, write, paint, and sketch. I feel it when I meditate, contemplate, journal, and focus on letting go of the noise that detracts from the silence I cultivate in my life.

My inner child is on fire when we ride bicycles, play at the park, build stuff, and make complete messes of the toys. One of the best things we do together is art. I sit next to Ford, and we both paint something on our pads using our own brushes. Ford will pause on his masterpiece, peer at my canvas, and say, “Hey, pa pa. What are you working on?”

A few minutes later, I pause and say, “Hey, Ford. What are you working on?”

It’s a magical exchange.

Do you remember what it feels like to be a child? I hope so. If not, one way to begin remembering is by finding little things, anything, for which you can be grateful.

Making the most of time

Despite some of the challenges my wife and I face in life, we always make time for family, especially our two sons and their children. Investing time intentionally is a big part of living a rich life in our later years, and remembering to be grateful for every minute we’re here.

I make sure Ford and I have plenty of adventures planned for the weekend. But for the most part, like any child, we live in the bliss of the now, where there is no time, play, or maybe a temper tantrum.

My mornings are most special to me. Sharing them with my grandchildren is the last image I will leave you with today. When Ford pops out of bed at about 6 a.m., knowing I’m waiting for him in the family room where I sip coffee, read, journal, and list the things for which I am grateful, he comes to find me right away.

I hear him stirring and anticipate the first greeting of the day. There’s something undefinable about the innocence of a child who has just awoken from a full night’s sleep in his big boy bed.

When I see him approach, rubbing his eyes and getting used to the subtle light I use for reading, I smile and say, “Good morning, Ford. How are you? Did you have any dreams? Come give me a big hug and let’s start the day on a great note.”

“Okay, pa pa.”

And with a long, warm, and brilliantly loving hug, we start another day full of play.

Thanks for leaving a comment and restacking this article if it helped you.

One of my intentions with Aging with Gratitude is to pour more of my energy into the arts that matter most to me: writing and photography.

But the other intention behind this work is to force myself out of my comfort zone, because at this stage of life it’s pretty easy to withdraw from the world’s mayhem and overlook the essential importance of human connection and stories.

I am naturally introverted and private. Walking up to someone and asking if I can photograph them, interview them, and ask intimate questions about their life does not necessarily come naturally to me. That is precisely why I am doing it.

The practice is not simply about taking better photographs or writing better stories. It is about extending myself into my community, working through whatever fear or hesitation shows up, meeting people where they are, and creating enough trust that they might allow me to see something real.

Sometimes those people live much closer than I realize.

Cindy Ayers lives less than a mile from our 1,400-square-foot home in North Scottsdale, Arizona. Our dogs know one another. Over the years, Cindy and my wife have become friends, and my wife has taken many Pilates sessions from her.

Still, it took me a while to work up the courage to ask Cindy if she would sit for a portrait.

She said yes.

We met in the three-car garage she transformed years ago into her Pilates studio. Cindy was a joy to photograph. We also photographed her two dogs, Russell and Asher, whose portraits you see accompanying this story.

Afterward, I asked Cindy another question.

Would she be willing to let me interview her for Aging with Gratitude?

Again, she said yes.

Ironically, although we live less than a mile apart, we interviewed by phone.

Be home before dark

Cindy grew up in the Chicago area and remembers her childhood as independent, free, and simple.

There was a park across the street. She remembers lying in the grass looking at puffy white clouds, exploring the woods, wandering through the neighborhood, and spending long days outside with friends.

She could disappear for most of the day.

At around 6 p.m., her Mother would blow a whistle.

Time for dinner.

Listening to Cindy describe it took me straight back to my own childhood in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of us grew up with a degree of freedom that seems almost unimaginable today.

The basic parental instruction was simple:

Be home before dark.

And off we went.

Cindy loved horses and decided early that she wanted one of her own. Wanting one and getting one, however, were two different things.

She started babysitting at eleven. At fifteen, she worked as a waitress. By sixteen, she had persuaded her parents to let her have a horse.

There was a catch.

Her parents made her sign a contract spelling out her responsibilities and the promises she would have to keep.

She signed it.

Looking back, Cindy told me that period of her life taught her something fundamental:

“I learned to depend on myself.”

That sentence would become more important later.

Building a life

Cindy eventually attended Northwestern University and later met Martin, an Australian who taught tennis professionally while on what she jokingly described as a “walkabout” through the Chicago area.

Friends introduced them.

They married and began building a life together.

For more than a decade, Cindy developed a successful career in marketing and communications. She worked with agencies and became a writer, designer, and producer.

After about fifteen years, she burned out.

So Cindy did what she had learned to do throughout her life. She changed direction.

She began building a career as a full-time fitness trainer, something that excited her enormously.

Then life changed the plan.

Their first son, Dylan, arrived in 2000.

Motherhood had not been part of Cindy’s immediate career strategy, but once it arrived, she committed herself to it with the same determination she had brought to everything else.

About three and a half years later, Quinn was born.

As Cindy described those years, they sounded almost idyllic.

She was raising two young boys while continuing to teach fitness part-time. Martin was tall, handsome, dynamic, and successful. He had launched his own hedge fund and had become a private pilot.

From the outside, it looked like the life people work decades to create.

Then, in 2006, everything changed.

The phone call no one is prepared for

Martin was flying his private airplane when it crashed.

He was killed.

Dylan was five.

Quinn was two.

I tried to imagine Cindy standing at the edge of that new reality, but there are experiences another person cannot truly imagine unless they have lived them.

The husband was gone.

The father was gone.

Cindy was suddenly a single Mother responsible for two young boys.

And there was more.

Martin’s business affairs, Cindy discovered, were a mess. Resolving what he had left behind required years of working with attorneys while simultaneously grieving, parenting, earning a living, and trying to create some form of stability for her children.

As I listened, my already considerable respect for Cindy rose to another level.

The woman speaking to me was calm and direct. She wasn’t telling me a heroic story about herself. She was describing what happened and what she did next.

She kept going.

Years later, on an anniversary of Martin’s death, Cindy’s father said something that changed how she understood her own story.

“We’re proud of you,” he told her.

Cindy was surprised.

“I didn’t have a choice,” she replied.

Her father disagreed.

“You did have a choice.”

He reminded her that she had chosen to raise two beautiful sons. She had chosen to carry the responsibilities of a single parent. She had chosen to rebuild her career, grow her fitness business, become part of her community, and continue finding her own path despite everything life had placed in front of her.

She had not merely survived.

She had chosen to thrive.

The infinite well

That distinction stayed with Cindy.

There were certainly moments when thriving didn’t feel inspirational.

She remembers driving home late one night after work and passing the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale. Looking up at the hospital windows, she saw a room and had a strange thought.

How wonderful it would be to crawl into that bed and sleep.

Just sleep.

She was that exhausted.

Yet somehow, when she needed more energy, she found it.

Cindy described it as almost unconscious, an infinite well somewhere inside herself that seemed to provide what she needed when she needed it most.

Today, life continues to ask things of her.

She recently underwent knee surgery and has been working through her own rehabilitation while also caring for Asher, her aging dog, as he faces physical challenges of his own.

But Cindy is living a life she loves.

And perhaps that is what stayed with me most after we hung up.

Aging with gratitude does not mean pretending painful things didn’t happen. It doesn’t mean smiling through grief, denying exhaustion, or decorating tragedy with inspirational sayings.

It means recognizing that even when we cannot choose what happens to us, we often retain some ability to choose what happens next.

Cindy’s father helped her see that.

And Cindy helped remind me.

I began this project because I wanted a reason to pick up my camera, practice my writing, leave the safety of my own little world, and connect more deeply with the people around me.

I thought I was asking Cindy for a portrait and a story.

Instead, a neighbor less than a mile away gave me something more valuable.

She reminded me that courage often looks remarkably ordinary.

Sometimes it is raising two little boys when the person you planned to raise them with is suddenly gone.

Sometimes it is getting out of bed when you desperately want to sleep.

Sometimes it is rebuilding a career.

Sometimes it is rehabilitating a knee or caring for an old dog.

And sometimes it is simply walking across the neighborhood, knocking on someone’s door, and asking:

Would you let me hear your story?

Because when we do, we may discover that extraordinary lives have been unfolding quietly all around us.

And occasionally, if we’re fortunate, those stories change our own.

Thanks for leaving a comment and restacking this article if it helped you.

I know what it feels like to drown in debt. It wasn’t student loans. I paid those back. It was a much bigger wave of delusion that led to my fall.

Years ago, my business wasn’t growing fast enough to support the income I needed to take home. I kept swinging for the fence, believing the next client, the next opportunity, the next good month would turn things around.

When the money wasn’t there, debt filled the gap.

For a while.

That’s one of the seductive things about debt. It buys time. It lets you keep living as though the problem is solved, when all you’ve really done is push it into the future.

Eventually, my future arrived.

I went bankrupt.

The financial damage was bad enough. The emotional devastation was worse. I had built businesses, advised people about money, supported a family, and considered myself a reasonably smart guy. Yet there I was.

Broke.

It took me years to understand that recovering financially wasn’t enough. I had to change my relationship with money.

I had to learn to want less.

I had to become patient.

Most of all, I had to become grateful.

I started paying attention to the wealth I already possessed: my wife, our children and grandchildren, extended family and friends, great health, and a comfortable middle-class lifestyle.

These weren’t consolation prizes because I had swung for the fence and missed.

They were the prize.

My relationship with money changed. My spending changed. I stopped asking money to prove something about me.

That’s when I became a very wealthy man.

Which brings me, strangely enough, to ancient Sumer.

We have been here before

Sumer emerged in Mesopotamia roughly five thousand years ago, in what is now southern Iraq. The Sumerians built some of humanity’s earliest cities. They developed writing, accounting, contracts, organized government, and sophisticated lending systems.

And debt.

A farmer could suffer a bad harvest and borrow grain. Another bad year could force him to borrow again. Interest accumulated. Eventually he could lose his land, his labor, and, in some circumstances, members of his family to debt bondage.

One indebted farmer wasn’t going to bring down a civilization.

Thousands could.

Mesopotamian rulers eventually recognized a problem. If creditors accumulated too many claims against farmers and families, the financial system could destroy the productive society supporting it.

So rulers periodically proclaimed what historians call “clean slates.” Certain personal and agricultural debts were canceled. People trapped in debt servitude could be released. Property could be restored.

It wasn’t simply charity. The kingdom needed farmers farming, workers working, soldiers serving, and families functioning.

Five thousand years later, we’ve replaced clay tablets with Treasury securities and barley with dollars.

Human nature hasn’t changed nearly as much.

$40 trillion

The gross federal debt of the United States has crossed $40 trillion. Imagine stacking $40 trillion in one-dollar bills.

The pile would rise through the atmosphere, pass the satellites, reach the Moon, return to Earth, and repeat the round trip more than five times. In all, the stack would stretch roughly 2.7 million miles into space. That is what $40 trillion looks like when we give the number physical size.

The number is so large it has almost lost its ability to shock us.

What concerns me more is what’s underneath it.

The federal government spends substantially more than it collects. Interest on the debt has passed $1 trillion a year and now costs more than we spend on defense.

And we aren’t doing this in the middle of another Great Depression or World War.

We’re doing it as normal business.

This isn’t a Republican problem or a Democratic problem. Both parties have participated. Americans like government benefits. We like a powerful military. We like healthcare, Social Security, Medicare, and tax cuts.

We especially like receiving things today and sending part of the bill into tomorrow.

I recognize the behavior.

I used to do it myself.

Debt buys the illusion of time

A nation isn’t a household or a small business. The comparison only goes so far.

The United States controls its currency, taxes the world’s largest economy, and borrows primarily in dollars. I couldn’t print money or issue 30-year bonds to rescue my business.

America can.

But that doesn’t repeal arithmetic.

When spending exceeds revenue, the difference has to come from somewhere. We borrow it. When the debt grows, interest expense grows. That interest becomes another expense requiring revenue or additional borrowing.

Debt buys time.

It doesn’t necessarily buy change.

That was my mistake.

My bankruptcy wasn’t really decided on the day I filed the paperwork. By then, the important decisions had already been made.

I had been borrowing from tomorrow because I wasn’t willing — or wasn’t yet able — to make enough changes today.

Eventually tomorrow showed up.

Can America learn to want less?

Maybe that’s the question underneath our $40 trillion debt.

Not “How do we pay off $40 trillion tomorrow?”

We won’t.

The better question is whether a wealthy society can rediscover the meaning of enough.

Cut foreign aid, and the problem remains.

Eliminate waste and fraud — and we certainly should — and the problem remains.

End unnecessary wars and reduce military spending, and the problem gets smaller but remains.

Tax the wealthy more heavily, and the arithmetic changes, but the long-term problem doesn’t disappear.

Eventually, we arrive at what nobody wants to discuss: where Americans actually spend serious money — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, healthcare, defense, interest on the debt, other programs — and the taxes required to support them.

Something eventually has to give.

Ancient rulers could proclaim a clean slate.

America cannot simply cancel $40 trillion in Treasury obligations. Those bonds are assets owned by Americans, retirement funds, banks, insurance companies, the Federal Reserve, and investors around the world. Wiping them away wouldn’t liberate America. It would create another crisis.

Our clean slate has to be different.

It begins with behavior.

The meaning of enough

I don’t look back on my bankruptcy fondly. But I’m grateful for what eventually came from it.

It forced me to confront something bigger than my balance sheet.

How much was enough?

I had spent years chasing more. More business. More income. More growth. More proof that I was succeeding.

There is nothing wrong with ambition. There is nothing wrong with becoming wealthy. There is nothing wrong with borrowing money when that debt creates something productive enough to justify it.

The danger comes when more becomes the answer to everything.

More spending.

More borrowing.

More consumption.

More tomorrow sacrificed to maintain today.

Eventually I discovered that wanting less didn’t make my life smaller.

It made my life bigger.

I became grateful for the woman beside me, the family around me, my friends, my health, the roof over my head, meaningful work, and the privilege of waking up each morning with another day to live.

I had enough.

More than enough.

And that’s when money stopped owning so much of me.

Five thousand years ago, the people of Mesopotamia discovered that excessive debt could bind people so tightly that society itself suffered. We’re still wrestling with the same human problem.

America doesn’t need a Sumerian debt jubilee.

We need something considerably harder.

We need the patience to pay for what we consume, the courage to choose what matters most, and enough gratitude to see how wealthy we already are.

Debt is a useful servant.

It is a terrible master.

I learned that the hard way.

Maybe $40 trillion is America’s opportunity to learn it before we have to.

Thanks for leaving a comment and restacking this article if it helped you.

I recently came across an article from the National Council on Aging titled “The Many Gifts of Gratitude and Its Role in Aging Well.” Naturally, anything connecting gratitude and aging catches my attention these days.

One idea stood out the most: gratitude encourages us to focus on what is, rather than what is missing. The article describes gratitude and mindfulness as important dimensions of aging well.

The reason I’m sharing my experience with you is to demonstrate that I’m learning as I go and just beginning to plan the rest of my life, one day at a time. For example, I’m trying new things like launching this newsletter, pedaling my bicycle around the area to look for interesting people with dogs, and asking if I can take their picture.

Yes, I have much for which to be grateful. Yet I’m not the only aging person who finds that easier said than done once retirement starts to appear on the horizon. There are millions of us, and I’m at the tail end of the Boomer Generation, which boomed from 1946 to 1964.

Being intentional about what is next matters.

For most of my adult life, my family and entrepreneurial work supplied plenty of stimulation. There were problems to solve, people to help, businesses to build, things to learn, and deadlines to meet. Family gave life meaning beyond work. Staying physically healthy gave me another responsibility.

But what happens when work becomes optional? After all, my conscious choice decades ago was to live to work, not work to live. My work was powered by purpose and meaning — being of service to others.

If you owned a time bank, how would you invest your time? You wouldn’t work for money — something bigger would draw you in. That question has been on my mind because I have no desire to retire from being curious, keeping my mind active, and keeping my body limber enough to put my boxer shorts and socks on without falling on my head.

I love to write. I want to keep improving my photography. I want to become a better watercolor painter. I want to mentor younger people and share some of what six decades of mistakes, successes, losses, and surprises have taught me.

At the same time, I don’t need to become what researchers call a “SuperAger,” someone whose memory remains unusually strong into advanced age. And I certainly don’t need to break a longevity record, which is why I haven’t bothered to buy or read Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity.

I’m more into cooperation than competition for superaging. I’d like my mind and body to remain useful for as long as I’m here. It turns out that research gives me good reasons to keep doing exactly these things.

The National Institute on Aging reports that staying mentally engaged may support cognitive health. One particularly interesting study found that older adults who learned digital photography or quilting experienced greater memory improvement than those who primarily socialized or engaged in less cognitively demanding activities. Research into creative writing, music, theater, and dance has also shown promising benefits for memory, self-esteem, stress, and social connection. However, researchers caution that the evidence is not strong enough to claim these activities prevent cognitive decline.

That’s a huge distinction. Painting isn’t medicine. Photography isn’t an Alzheimer’s vaccine. Writing every morning doesn’t guarantee anything. Cycling is easier on my joints than running, and it still keeps my heart young.

But learning difficult things appears to matter. So does moving. Again, it seems I’m on the right track.

The National Institute on Aging recommends that older adults combine aerobic activity, strength training, and balance work. Regular physical activity is associated with better physical function, greater independence, improved emotional health, and lower risks for several chronic diseases.

Federal guidelines recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate physical activity each week plus muscle-strengthening activity on two days.

And then there are people.

Mentoring may be as important to my aging plan as cycling, writing, or painting. NIA research has linked greater social engagement — including volunteering — with better cognitive health later in life. The 2024 Lancet Commission on dementia prevention likewise emphasized the importance of remaining cognitively, physically, and socially active throughout later life.

Maybe that’s the part of retirement planning we don’t talk about enough. We spend decades preparing financially for the day we no longer have to work. Most of us don’t make it that far. Regardless, what if we spent just as much time thinking about what will make us want to get out of bed once we don’t have to?

For me, the answer is becoming clearer. Family. Health. Writing. Photography. Painting. Mentoring. Learning. Connecting.

And gratitude for still having the opportunity to do all of it. I’m not trying to defeat aging. I’m trying to participate fully in it.

Thanks for leaving a comment and restacking this article if it helped you.

I stumbled onto Bob Maddox the way we stumble onto many of the best things these days: completely by accident. One minute I was wandering around YouTube. The next I was watching a man about my age strap himself onto something that appeared to have been designed jointly by NASA, Wile E. Coyote, and a committee with no adult supervision.

Then he fired it up.

Flames shot out the back, the machine screamed, and Maddox took off across the desert. He was laughing. That was the moment I fell in love with the guy.

Not because I suddenly developed an interest in pulse-jet propulsion. I have enough hobbies capable of injuring me. What caught me was the expression on his face. It was pure joy, but not dignified, reflective, age-appropriate joy. It was kid joy.

Bob Maddox, better known online as Crazy Rocketman, has spent decades building pulse-jet engines and attaching them to things that sensible people generally leave unpowered: bicycles, skateboards, motorcycles, go-karts, and other assorted vehicles that apparently seemed insufficiently dangerous in their original form.

A profile in Road & Track described Maddox as a self-taught builder who spent years experimenting with pulse jets despite having no formal engineering education. He has also been a cabinetmaker, painter, and serious skydiver. According to his own biography, he completed more than 2,000 jumps.

His fascination goes back much further. As a boy, Maddox was captivated by rockets, airplanes, the space race, and Wile E. Coyote’s endlessly unsuccessful attempts to propel himself toward the Road Runner. Most of us watched those cartoons and laughed. Bob apparently took notes.

There is something beautifully rich in that.

We talk a great deal about what disappears as we grow older. Strength declines. Faces wrinkle. Friends disappear. Careers end. Our bodies begin sending invoices for things we did thirty years ago. But aging is also a process of deciding what we refuse to surrender.

Curiosity can survive. Wonder can survive. Play can survive. The child survives.

It’s a mindset.

Psychologists sometimes speak about the “inner child,” a phrase that can become a little precious if we are not careful. But watching Maddox tear across the desert with fire shooting several feet behind him, I understood the idea instantly. The child is not always some wounded little creature hiding inside us. Sometimes he is having the time of his life.

One of the great mistakes we make about aging is confusing maturity with seriousness. We assume a mature person should become more restrained, predictable, and respectable. Maybe. But there is another possibility. Maybe maturity means becoming sufficiently comfortable with yourself that you no longer care whether everyone understands why you are having so much fun.

Maddox spent years quietly mastering something almost nobody else was doing. Much of his early experimentation failed—eventually, experience accumulated. Skill followed curiosity. His strange machines began attracting attention, YouTube arrived, and the audience found him.

Suddenly, this wonderfully eccentric older man had hundreds of thousands of people watching him play.

There is a lesson buried beneath all that noise and fire. We spend the first part of life trying to become somebody. We build careers, reputations, families, and identities. We learn what responsible adults are supposed to do. Then, if we are fortunate, something changes. We begin asking a different question: What still makes me feel alive?

For Bob Maddox, apparently, the answer involves jet fuel.

Yours may be quieter. It might be painting, gardening, teaching, writing, playing guitar, riding a bicycle, sitting on the floor with a grandchild, or learning something simply because you want to know it. The activity is almost beside the point. What matters is recognizing that small spark when it appears and giving it oxygen.

I am 65 now, and I increasingly suspect that one of the privileges of getting older is realizing we do not have to extinguish the boy or girl we once were. We can invite them along.

Preferably, in my case, without strapping a pulse jet to anything. Instead, I imagine I’m exercising my inner child when I’m pedaling my bicycle several times each week. It all started with a blue Schwinn Stingray back in the day.

But watching Bob Maddox race across the desert, laughing like a kid while flames pour out behind him, I cannot help thinking he may have figured something out.

Growing older is unavoidable, but it’s clearly negotiable.

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I am failing to meet my expectations for my new project, Aging with Gratitude. The initial focus has been connecting with new, local people in the Phoenix area who are willing to sit for a portrait and share their story with me.

My inspiration is to challenge myself artistically and socially, and to produce better photography and writing. So far it’s working, and that’s the good news.

Perhaps I’m not failing as much as not meeting my initial expectations, which has been a pattern in my life. Not sweating the small stuff helps, and this is small stuff in the grand scheme.

I’m grateful for what I’ve learned so far, and for the incredible people I’ve met, including a woman I photographed at 6:30 a.m. today with her two Labrador retrievers, one of them below.

Lessons learned so far

I’ve learned that many people don’t feel comfortable sitting for the project. I share an overview with them, and rarely do they want to proceed. Most often, the aversion comes from discomfort in front of a camera, or in the public eye.

Some people change their mind after the portrait session. That’s another lesson I accept and chalk up to experience.

Why argue with reality?

For example, I photographed a woman in Chandler early in the project. We both loved her portrait. But she didn’t want to follow up with the story I wanted to write — a story of trial and triumph. She had been through hell and back.

The last lesson is that I absolutely love the challenge. It’s not easy to pack the mobile studio light and gear, unload it, set it up, get ready for the shoot, shoot it, wrap up, pack up, and drive home to tackle the edits.

But I love it. It’s the feeling I get while writing this story, sharing the picture above, and becoming a better writer, photographer, and hopefully, human being. Trust me that trusting our feelings, given we are sound of mind and sober, is the way to know the way to go for you; your path, your destiny.

The latter only happens when I trust my inspirations enough to get off my butt and into the world, connecting with other humans — who are more like you and me than different — and getting to know them while practicing my favorite arts: writing and photography.

Not knowing can be uncomfortable

Sometimes I don’t know what I want. That’s universal. I’m in a transition from a past business identity and life to a new one: writer, photographer, visual artist, and grandfather. It’s a challenging transition shedding the business warrior mask for that of a different me.

It’s normal not to know what’s next or what I want specifically. I trust that inspiration — the spirit of my muses, a higher power from within — will show me when it’s time.

That’s trust. My faith is the foundation of it: when I don’t know, I will know in due time. While waiting, I can remain open, aware, curious, and diligent by reading, researching, and taking notes, and waiting because patience is a virtue, after all.

The path to emotional freedom

Curiosity powers my life. Knowing that, I’m okay when I’m not. Trust, wait, feel, and when the time comes, know and go.

It’s emotional freedom acquired through acceptance, gratitude, and humility. These are the same qualities I see in the people I’m meeting, photographing, and writing stories about.

I see similarities, not differences. Wiser people taught me that.

How could I not be grateful for it all, especially the uncomfortable stuff that makes us better humans? I already sit too much in front of a screen. Aware of that, I intend to keep this project going. I trust I’ll meet more people in due time, and that many will be willing to let me take their picture and tell their story of gratitude.

Gratitude works when you let it

Here’s a nugget. When we can be grateful for all we’ve got, and we learn more about who we are versus who we are not, and the masks fall by the wayside, we become more emotionally free.

Life can teach us to become grateful. We all go through our personal trials. We all confront the emotional tsunamis as they hit. So, as we age, we can learn new lessons, and our suffering can change us.

Suffering can lead us to be grateful. Gratitude and other virtues lead the way to emotional freedom. That may be the best of all.

I am grateful for the early positive feedback on Aging with Gratitude, and I encourage you to share my work with your friends and family. Feel free to copy and paste the link to the overview for Aging with Gratitude.

https://forms.gle/4EqoHnP17XQPHT9i6

Thanks for being along for the ride.

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Look closely at Ford’s eyes in this photograph. He’s our oldest grandson, a little over three. He is wearing his Buzz Lightyear pajamas and sitting on a worn little rocking horse, but that is not where he is in his imagination.

He is Buzz Lightyear in this moment.

He’s also riding a magical horse across some distant world known only to him. I get to observe this, and in this moment, I am reminded of who we are.

The real us.

You can see the bliss in his face. He is completely absorbed in the adventure. All of us were like this early in life, until life happened, and we forgot.

Ford is not pretending halfway

He has entered the story with his whole being. He is not concerned about what happened yesterday or what might happen tomorrow. He is not wondering how he looks, whether anyone approves, or what he should accomplish next. He is fully alive in the only place life has ever happened, right here and right now.

When I look at him, I see what psychologists call a flow state. I also see something much older and more spiritual. Children seem to possess a natural ability to surrender to the moment before the world teaches them to worry, compare, hurry, perform, and protect themselves.

Children do not need to study presence because presence is still their natural way of being.

Children are presence, a gift

As adults, most of us gradually lose that state of presence. Our minds become crowded with responsibilities, ambitions, regrets, resentments, and fears. We replay conversations that ended years ago and prepare for problems that may never happen. We become so busy managing life that we stop experiencing it.

Then, as we grow older, many of us begin searching for peace.

The Tibetan Buddhist tradition of Dzogchen offers an interesting perspective on that search. Dzogchen is often translated as “Great Perfection” or “Great Completeness.” It teaches that beneath the restless movement of our thoughts, our basic awareness is already open, clear, and whole.

The self-perfected state does not mean that our personalities are flawless or that we no longer need to grow. It means that the peace we seek may not have to be created. It may have to be remembered.

That idea speaks to me as I age. I have spent much of my life trying to become something, build something, fix something, understand something, or overcome something. There is value in growth, effort, and self-examination, but there is also a time to stop struggling with life and learn how to rest within it.

Jesus offered a similar invitation when he said:

“Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” - Matthew 18:3

He was not telling us to become childish. He was pointing toward the qualities children often possess before experience hardens them: humility, trust, openness, wonder, and the ability to receive life without constantly attempting to control it.

Ford does not understand Dzogchen, and he does not need to. He does not need a meditation retreat, a spiritual teacher, or another book about living in the present. For now, he climbs onto his horse, becomes Buzz Lightyear, and disappears into a world of his own creation.

Watching him reminds me that I once lived that way too. We all did.

We’re the only animal that imagines

There was a time when a cardboard box could become a spaceship, a backyard could become an unexplored wilderness, and an afternoon could stretch on forever. We did not require life to be impressive before we allowed ourselves to enjoy it.

Wonder was available everywhere because we were present enough to notice it.

Aging can narrow our world when we focus only on what hurts, what has changed, and what we can no longer do. Those losses are real, and gratitude should never be used to deny them.

Yet growing older can also simplify us. We begin to understand that not every disagreement must be won, not every goal must be reached, and not every question must be answered. Some burdens can finally be set down.

The Psalmist described this peaceful surrender beautifully:

“I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child with its mother.” - Psalm 131:2

That is the state I hope to inhabit as the years continue to pass. I do not expect constant happiness or freedom from grief. I hope for something quieter and deeper, a heart spacious enough to hold both sorrow and gratitude without being ruled by either.

Ford helps me remember how

When I am with him, I can put down the phone, stop measuring the usefulness of the moment, and enter his world for a while. I can laugh without needing a reason. I can recover my curiosity. I can be immensely grateful that I am still here to see the light in his eyes and feel his small hand reaching for mine.

Perhaps this is one of the greatest gifts our grandchildren offer us. They do more than continue the family story. They lead us back toward a part of ourselves we may have buried beneath the weight of adulthood.

Ford does not know he is teaching me anything. He is simply riding his magic horse.

I am the one remembering how to be alive.

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If you had asked me to read Tolstoy as a younger man, I would have told you I didn’t have time. But later in life, I developed an insatiable curiosity about Tolstoy, Emerson, Jung, Dostoevsky, and many of the great thinkers who wrestled with the deeper questions of human existence.

My hope has always been that they could help me wrestle with the deepest questions, and they have. After recently finishing Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God Is Within You, I realized that Leo Tolstoy had everything the world tells us should make a person happy.

By the time he reached fifty, he was one of the most celebrated writers alive. He had produced War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He possessed wealth, land, status, a wife, children, and the admiration of readers around the world.

Yet Tolstoy found himself standing at the edge of despair.

“I did not myself know what I wanted,” he wrote. “I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.”

His Crisis Was Not Caused by Failure

It was caused by the discovery that success could not answer his deepest question:

“Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?”

Tolstoy could no longer distract himself with work, pleasure, property, or praise. Death made every achievement appear temporary. If everything he loved would eventually disappear, what lasting meaning could life possibly have?

He described this spiritual breakdown in A Confession, written shortly after turning fifty. It was more than depression. It was a crisis of consciousness, the collapse of the worldview that had guided his adult life.

When crisis calls us, how will we answer?

Why the Question Comes Later

Many people begin asking spiritual questions as they grow older because the identities that once supported them begin to weaken. That’s been my experience, and for many I know or have studied.

Curiosity about a higher power seems universal for certain souls. Life happens, our consciousness evolves.

Careers end. Children leave. Parents and friends die. The body changes. Recognition fades. Time, which once seemed unlimited, becomes precious.

The questions become harder to avoid: What was my life really about? What remains when my accomplishments are forgotten? What part of me, if any, survives death?

These questions can create fear, but they can also become gateways to higher consciousness and fulfill our human purpose. The loss of certainty may open us to humility. The awareness of death can teach us to value life. The fading of ambition can make room for gratitude.

Tolstoy began looking beyond the educated and wealthy people around him. He observed ordinary laborers, farmers, and religious believers who endured poverty and hardship without surrendering to despair.

They believed life had meaning because they participated in something greater than the individual self. This compelled Tolstoy to shift his view. A reason to live for a higher purpose, such as self-determination, much like Viktor Frankl taught us.

“Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.” - Leo Tolstoy

From Achievement to Transformation

Tolstoy returned to the teachings of Jesus, especially the commands to love, forgive, serve, live simply, and resist violence. His beliefs remained controversial and often differed from official Russian Orthodox doctrine. Yet the direction of his life changed.

The question was no longer, “What can I acquire?”

It became, “What kind of person must I become?”

This resembles the ancient Christian concept of theosis, the gradual transformation of the human person through participation in divine love. It’s the Eastern Christian way of revealing the enlightenment of humanity.

It does not mean becoming God. It means becoming more fully what we were created to be, more compassionate, truthful, humble, forgiving, and awake. Grace, in this sense, is not merely something we receive. It is something we learn to embody.

Tolstoy increasingly believed that social progress depended upon this inner change. “A better life can only come when the consciousness of men is altered for the better,” he wrote.

The Gift Hidden in Aging

Published in 1894, the book emerged from the radical spiritual transformation that followed Tolstoy’s midlife crisis. He had become disillusioned with wealth, fame, organized religion, government, and the violence societies accepted as normal.

Returning to the teachings of Jesus, especially the Sermon on the Mount, he concluded that the kingdom of God was not a political system, religious institution, or distant heaven. It was a moral and spiritual reality discovered within the individual.

Tolstoy argued that society could be transformed only when individuals practiced love, patience, forgiveness, and nonviolence in daily life.

The book revealed how completely his worldview had changed. The celebrated novelist who once pursued achievement and social status had become convinced that the meaning of life was found through conscience, simplicity, service, and obedience to the highest truth within us.

Tolstoy’s Later Life Was Not Peaceful or Perfect

He struggled with his family, his wealth, his beliefs, and the contradiction between his ideals and his behavior. That may be the most honest part of his story.

Spiritual awakening does not remove human weakness. It makes us more aware of it. Gratitude does not mean pretending that life is painless. It means recognizing that life remains sacred despite its pain.

Tolstoy discovered that the fear of death could become an invitation to live differently. Aging stripped away some of his illusions, but it also revealed a profound possibility.

We may spend the first half of life building an identity. The second half asks us to release it.

What remains may be simpler than we expected: love, service, forgiveness, gratitude, and the grace to become more fully human before our time is gone.

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The Aging with Gratitude™ project is a passion project I started in June of 2026. My passion for photography and storytelling is at the heart of my work.

My mission is to capture portraits of amazing human beings alongside the stories behind them. Stories of struggle and transformation. Conversations with people who have lived, suffered, recovered, lost, rebuilt, loved, failed, forgiven, and kept going. People who carry wisdom in their wrinkles. People who know life is both beautiful and hard — people who have become more fully human.

Aging with gratitude means we’re at a stage in life where we can look back and be thankful for the journey through hell and back. It hurt so much that it profoundly changed us.

Joe Berman and I met about ten years ago through a mutual acquaintance

We shared coffee, and I gave him an acrylic painting I had recently finished. I sensed immediately that we were kindred souls. We have stayed in touch and see each other off and on.

Born in Denver in 1973, Joe remembers fishing with his father as one of the happiest parts of his childhood.

His greatest challenge came in April 2019, when degenerative disc failure caused a traumatic spinal injury. His chin became pinned toward his chest. The symptoms felt almost like a stroke, and the pain was extreme.

Joe’s response was direct: attack it, take charge, and do the work. That mindset helped carry him through a difficult two-year recovery.

He is most grateful for his mother, Terri, who never gave up on him. Last year, Joe finally told her he was “ready to fly free.”

He is also grateful for Tiffany, his wife, and his 18-year-old son, Noah, a young thespian whom Joe encourages to become himself fully.

Joe has fought many battles without losing his joy. It is easy to love him because he embodies love.

The portrait session at The Thumb

I texted Joe on a whim earlier this week. Asked him if he could rally for a portrait session. Joe rides his e-bike to work most days. He serves as general manager at The Thumb, a one-of-a-kind North Scottsdale destination that combines award-winning barbecue, a bakery, a gift shop, a gas station, and a full-service car wash. When he’s not working, he loves hiking and spending quality time with friends and family.

Without hesitation, he invited me to meet him at work, where he’s overseeing a major renovation project. We exchanged a big hug and warm smiles. I set up in the corner of the restaurant area. During the portrait session, Joe was exactly the man I have come to know. Open, playful, present, and completely himself.

At first, you notice the glasses

As if to see them as the custom windows to the eyes, then his soul. They are bold, slightly eccentric, and impossible to ignore. I complimented him because they suit him well.

Then your eyes move beyond the frames and meet his expression. There is alertness there, but no hardness. His eyes carry the awareness of someone who has suffered, fought back, and learned not to waste the life he reclaimed.

His smile is wide and unguarded. It does not feel posed. It feels like Joe. You can almost hear him laughing before the photograph was taken and again after the shutter clicked. Within about nine shots, we were done.

Easy subject, compassionate nature

His Thumb shirt tells another part of the story. Joe is proud of his work and the people he serves. His tattooed arm, his beard, and the lines across his face reveal a man who has lived fully rather than carefully.

As I photographed him, I kept thinking about the contrast. The black background holds the darkness he has known, while his face seems to rise out of it with warmth and light.

That is Joe Berman.

He has been hurt, but he is not bitter. He has faced fear, but he remains joyful. He has fought for his life, and now he seems determined to love every mile of it.

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I recently asked someone I know what he thought about SuperAging. He had no clue what I was talking about. Neither did I, until I came across the term, researched it, and started writing about it.

The idea caught my attention because I realized something surprising: I may already be living it. I am not claiming to be biologically exceptional, nor am I pretending that aging is easy.

My face resembles beef jerky when I look at myself. I wake up with aches I did not have at 30. Recovery takes longer. Sleep quality matters. Finding the optimal foods to keep me going, and not taking prescription drugs for anything, are paramount for the long game.

The body keeps an honest record of the years

Still, at 65, I feel mentally curious, physically active, spiritually grounded, and more excited about creating than I did during many of my younger years. I credit a strong gene pool, years of learning from painful mistakes, and the grace of the Almighty One.

SuperAgers are generally described as older adults whose memories, thinking abilities, or physical capacities remain unusually strong for their age. Scientists have studied people over 80 who demonstrate remarkable mental sharpness and resilience.

But SuperAging means more to me than performing well on a memory test. It is a way of meeting life.

Some people become old long before their bodies require it. They stop learning. They stop moving. They stop questioning their assumptions. They decide their most creative and meaningful years are behind them. Their world gets smaller because they expect it to.

Others remain open. I recently met an 81-year-young woman who plays tennis three times a week. My hero! Others walk, lift weights, ride bicycles, read books, create art, start businesses, volunteer, mentor younger people, strengthen friendships, and keep asking better questions. They may move more slowly, but they are still moving toward something.

Age is a state of mind and body—the two influence each other every day

When we believe decline is inevitable, we may stop doing the very things that help preserve our strength. When we believe growth remains possible, we are more likely to exercise, connect, learn, rest, eat wisely, and find reasons to get out of bed.

This is not magical thinking. Belief alone will not prevent disease, erase genetics, or guarantee a long life. Some people do everything right and still face devastating illness. Others neglect themselves and live far longer than anyone expected. Life has never promised fairness.

SuperAging is not about blaming people for growing sick or frail. It is about taking responsibility for what remains within our influence.

We can move our bodies. We can feed our minds. We can stay connected to the people who bring us to life. We can release old resentment before it hardens into identity. We can stop telling ourselves that we are too old to learn, love, build, heal, travel, paint, write, change, or begin again.

Most of all, we can practice gratitude

Gratitude does not deny pain. It changes our relationship with it.

I am grateful for the muscles that still carry me, even when they complain. I am grateful for the brain that still asks questions. I am grateful for the failures that stripped away my pride and taught me humility. I am grateful that I no longer need to prove as much.

That may be one of the greatest gifts of growing older. We begin to understand that life is not measured only by how much we achieve, own, control, or accumulate.

A richer life may be found in a quiet morning, a strong cup of coffee, a bicycle ride, a grandchild’s laughter, an honest conversation, a blank canvas, or the realization that we are still here.

We cannot control how many years remain. But we can decide how awake we will be while living them. Maybe that is the true heart of SuperAging. Not refusing to grow old and refusing to stop growing.

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David Cooke’s portrait says what words can only try to explain. Sitting in front of the black backdrop in my garage studio, he did not pose as much as arrive. The shaved head, weathered face, gray beard, sun-marked skin, and easy smile all tell the truth of a man who has lived outside, inside, and through plenty.

In black and white, the same face becomes quieter, deeper, almost stripped down to spirit. You can see the lines, but they do not feel like age. They feel like evidence. This is a man who has stopped trying to hide from the road behind him.

He looks open, grounded, amused, and fully present. That is what I saw sitting with him. Not perfection. Not performance. Just David, comfortable in his own skin.

In the color version, there is warmth, playfulness, and mischief, helped along by the ridiculous joy of the cycling taco shirt.

At 69, he can look back and see his life in stages

He was born in 1957 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and spent his formative years in the Detroit area. The first stage of his life was corporate. The second was consulting, sales, and business consulting. The third came after a family tragedy that deeply changed him. That experience led him to start a nonprofit called 100 Pedals and ride his bicycle across America for 100 consecutive days.

Now, David says he is living what he calls “the rogue life.”

That sounds rebellious, but not reckless. For David, the rogue life seems to mean living from the heart instead of the script. Less control. More trust.

Less chasing. More presence.

The turning point came in 2009

A serious addiction issue struck someone in his family. It rocked his world. Like many people who love someone in crisis, David first tried to react, fix, manage, and control what could not be controlled.

That path did not work.

Over time, he made a conscious shift. He intentionally moved from reacting to reflecting. He moved from trying to control life to learning how to accept it. Not passively. Not weakly. But with awareness.

That kind of acceptance is not giving up. It is growing up.

David has also lived a sober life for more than 25 years

He doesn’t wear it like a badge of attention-seeking honor. That matters because his presence does not feel accidental. It feels practiced. Sobriety, yoga, travel, loss, family pain, and faith have all shaped him into a man who seems less interested in escaping life and more interested in meeting it directly.

He does not preach about it. He lives it. That may be what makes it powerful.

When I asked David what he was most grateful for, he did not name one thing. He said he is grateful for the whole journey. All of it. Every stage. Every chapter. Every lesson.

That answer stayed with me because it did not sound polished. It sounded earned.

David does not claim to have no inner critic

When he looks in the mirror and takes stock of his life, he can still judge himself. He can still feel disappointed. But he has learned to distinguish between the smaller, self-critical mind and the larger part of himself that knows better.

He is a man of faith, but not a narrowly or rigidly religious one. His worldview feels universal. Open. Grounded. Human. He has a rare ability to meet people where they are — strangers, friends, whoever happens to be nearby.

I have known David for a little over 20 years, and I would call presence his superpower. He’s far more chill than when we first met. Taking a few runs through hell and back will do that.

The gift of presence

He can be present with people without needing to impress, fix, or perform for them. That was clear again when he came to my home studio, which is also my garage, so that I could make his portrait.

David is easy to be with, down to earth. No masks. No pretending.

In recent years, he has spent time in Bali and other parts of the world. He practices yoga and is certified to teach it. You can feel that in the way he carries himself.

The mind, body, breath, and presence are not theories to him. They show up in the way he speaks, the way he listens, and the way he moves through the room.

He describes himself as heart-led

You can feel it when you’re with him. His head, he says, can become too illogical. The heart knows who we are because the heart knows the soul.

“The soul knows who we really are.”

Everything outside of that belongs more to the ego, the self-critical mind, and the old story of not being enough.

David does not seem interested in chasing a destination anymore. That may be one of the gifts of aging well. At some point, life stops being only about getting somewhere. It becomes about being awake to where you are.

David enjoys sitting in local coffee shops and observing. He calls himself introverted, though he can turn on his extroversion when something matters to him.

Purpose lights him up. Meaning pulls him forward.

That, too, feels familiar

We have both changed over the last 30 years. We have both overthought life. We have both chased things. We have both learned, slowly and sometimes painfully, that control is not peace.

David’s story is not about having life figured out.

It is about learning to live without needing to.

That is radical acceptance. Not as a slogan. As a way of living.

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Janet told me she is both the luckiest and unluckiest person she has ever known.

After spending time with her in her beautiful home, I believe her.

Janet and I met through local outreach. I was looking for interesting people to connect with, hear their stories, and capture a black-and-white portrait. She was the first stranger who said yes.

The project is called Aging with Gratitude. I go into the community and sit across from people who have lived enough life to stop pretending. People who have suffered, rebuilt, lost, forgiven, and kept going. I listen. Then I make a portrait.

Janet’s portrait carries a quiet elegance

Against the black backdrop, her silver hair, soft smile, and bright eyes seem to hold both grace and strength. There is nothing forced in her expression.

She looks open, composed, and fully present, the way someone looks when they have lived long enough to need no longer to prove anything.

The color version brings warmth to her face and depth to her blue eyes, while the black-and-white version strips the image down to light, shadow, and character.

What remains is dignity.

Beauty, yes, but not the shallow kind. This is the beauty of a woman who has lived, endured, learned, and still chooses to meet the world with softness.

Janet is exactly who this project exists for

She was born in Europe in 1945. The Holocaust devastated her family. Janet has no memory before age five.

In 1949, her uncle sponsored her, her grandmother, and her aunt to come to America. They crossed the Atlantic on a huge military ship and landed in Miami.

She grew up during the postwar boom

Her mother worked on a factory floor, saved her money, and eventually found success in real estate. She prospered. She was also driven at the expense of her family. Janet noticed.

Janet attended Boston University, studied English literature, and began her adult life working in finance in Manhattan. She married, had a daughter, divorced when her daughter was two, returned to graduate school, and earned a Master’s degree in clinical psychology.

Somewhere along the way, her worldview shifted from a capitalist one to a humanist one. She did not say that like a confession. She said it like an observation. It became part of her struggle, her transformation, and her search for meaning.

Loss kept finding her

Her father died suddenly of a heart attack at 68. Her mother died at 56 of a cerebral hemorrhage. Feeling orphaned and unmoored, Janet said she made some choices she now describes as stupid. She married again. It did not last.

Later, Janet married a psychiatrist. Together, they built a clinical practice specializing in early brainwave biofeedback therapies. At one point, they operated five offices. She called it a tough business, but she was grateful for it because of the people they helped.

Then, in 1995, she lost her daughter.

Suddenly. Without warning.

That kind of loss can break a person.

Janet kept going

What followed was a search, she said, for a sound foundation. Janet became a seeker. She visited psychics. She was desperate to find her daughter somewhere. Her brother died not long after. Her husband had an affair. She left him shortly after they moved to Arizona in 1999 and started over from nothing.

She enrolled at the Scottsdale Culinary Institute because she loved to cook and needed something to love. Not long after, she met her current husband. They are very different people. They have been married 18 years, and by every measure she offered, it has been a happy life.

Janet practices yoga regularly

She plays tennis three times a week. She lit up when she told me about the massive abstract oil painting on her kitchen wall. Janet herself is radiant.

Her soul exudes warmth and serenity. Young at heart.

One of her favorite lines is, “If you have an address book, you have a ministry.”

I asked Janet what she is most grateful for. She did not hesitate.

“I’m most grateful for the love I received from so many people, which gave me the ability to love others.”

That stayed with me

I asked her what she had learned from all of it, the losses, the rebuilding, and the long arc of a life that refused to stay broken. She said the tough things taught her how to get up.

She said the greatest gift she received was love from others, and that love taught her how to give it back. She believes she has been protected by guardian angels her whole life.

We talked about life as I set up my photography lighting and backdrop. She showed me around her home. She told me her story without drama, without self-pity, and without pretending the pain had not been real.

That is what struck me most

Janet has known more loss than many people could carry. She has also known love, beauty, art, friendship, marriage, service, and gratitude. She has suffered. She has rebuilt. She has kept her heart open.

She is both the luckiest and the unluckiest person she has ever known.

After spending time with Janet Eggen, I think she might be right on both counts.

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Retirement is overrated, and I am at retirement age. Instead of sitting around, moving my sheckles, and being a quiet, content introvert, I’m facing my fear and getting out of my comfort zone to meet new people.

I am beginning a new photography and storytelling project called Aging with Gratitude™. My project isn’t about money. It’s my love of art, humans, and their stories.

Especially people who are fifty-five and older. The older, the better. But everyone must be willing to be on camera with me.

It’s time to launch this project on Substack, so welcome aboard.

The conversations I value the most.

They aren’t about success as much as about human struggle, suffering, and life-changing stories. Reinvention, regret, grace, recovery, meaning, purpose. The quiet wisdom that only comes from living a long, difficult life, because life is hard for all of us.

My mission is to capture black-and-white portraits alongside the stories behind them. Conversations with people who have lived, suffered, recovered, lost, rebuilt, loved, failed, forgiven, and kept going.

People who carry wisdom in their wrinkles. People who know life is both beautiful and hard—people who have become more fully human.

For example, even though my project is only a couple of weeks old, I met an eighty-one-year-old woman earlier this week who was born in 1945 in Germany. She barely made it out alive, and her story, her black and white portrait, will be ready to publish shortly.

A stranger became a friend. More to come.

Aging with gratitude means we’re at a stage in life where we can look back and be thankful for the journey through hell and back. The suffering hurt so much that it profoundly changed us.

The photography side of it.

I’ve been practicing photography since 1978, when I learned to make my first prints in a darkroom. Then, life happened, and even though I had a camera my entire life, I didn’t discover the inner artist within me until 2020.

Since then, I’ve been learning the business of art, photography, and painting, which is brutal, just like with writing and selling any decent book. I practice art for love, like most artists. For some of us, money trickles in. But this particular project has nothing to do with money.

Aging with Gratitude™ includes portraits that could be worth 10,000 words written in the wrinkles.

If you’re fifty-five or older and you’re still carrying something—the failure, the loss, the comeback, the forgiveness that took thirty years to find—I want to meet you. I don’t care if you’ve never been photographed before, never thought your face was worth looking at twice.

That’s not how I see it. I want to sit across from you, let you talk, and then point a camera at the kind of face that only comes from staying alive through things that should have taken you under.

Find me on Instagram. Send a message. Tell me where you’re from, what you’ve survived, what you’d want a stranger to know about you before you’re gone. I’ll bring my camera, my questions, and the kind of patience I didn’t have at thirty.

The project is off to a great start.

Because here’s what I’m starting to understand, two weeks and one extraordinary German grandmother into this project: we don’t earn wisdom by living long. We earn it by living through.

Wrinkles reveal our wisdom.

The wrinkles aren’t the story—they’re just where the story chose to settle. Somewhere underneath every one of them is a person who got knocked down by something life-sized and decided, for reasons even they can’t always explain, to get back up.

That’s what I’m after. Not nostalgia. Not a highlight reel of a life well-lived. The real thing—the grit and the grace, the unbearable and the unbelievable, sitting in the same face at the same time.

Aging with Gratitude™ isn’t about pretending the hard years didn’t happen. It’s about what’s still standing after they did.

Come find me. Let’s talk. Help me inspire millions to age with gratitude.

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