"The character traits of gratitude, generosity, patience, joy, and equanimity are vital to manifesting some of the behaviors that Dr. George Vaillant, director of Harvard University's extended longitudinal study on aging, has identified as promoting aging well:

"• Being able to orient one's thinking toward the future rather than the past.
• Maintaning a generally optimistic perspective, choosing to interpret events and choices so one sees possibilities rather than risks when given the opportunity.
• Developing mature adaptive strategies (turning lemons into lemonade).
• Reacting well to change, disease, and conflict.
• Reinventing oneself.
• Practicing forgiveness.
• Feeling and expressing gratitude.
• Letting go of self-importance.
• Demonstrating for the young how not to fear death.
• Finding a rationale for living well even in times of great loss.

"Hearing such a list might prompt us to wonder whether we can really expect so much of ourselves, especially if these orientations don't come naturally to us. Can we grow and strengthen these qualities at this point in our lives? At a recent lecture in a retirement community, a man in the back row raised his hand with a question. "How is it possible to change now that we are so old?" A woman in front turned to reassure him that he was fine the way he was. Someone else asked him why he thought age ruled out the possibility of change. After all, many things were changing in his life all the time.

"Change is always possible. We know from experience that it is often precipitated by dark times. The good news is that we don't have to experience crisis or severe challenges in order to make different choices in our lives. Religious traditions have always known this. Different Christians talk about this in different ways, calling this kind of change conversion, salvation, or being born again. Jews call it returning – t'shuvah. Often we think that this is a sudden turnabout, a momentous "seeing the light," after which everything is different; but, in fact, it is almost always a process. There may be a sudden awakening, but we still have to do the inner work to incorporate and integrate the new ways of thinking and being that we glimpsed in the moment of inspiration or decision."