Did you know that, in our society, every 20 seconds someone has a 65^th birthday? And do you know that there are more people over 65 in the United States today than the entire population of Canada? The average life expectancy for a 50-year-old woman today is 83 years of age! A generation ago, only one in ten Americans reached the age of 60.

The gerontologists today stretch our definition of middle age all the way to 65, late adulthood to 80, and the onset of well-aged elder years beginning at 80 years of age.

But listen, don't you go wild on me by taking a double dose of Metamucil tonight, because we're still going to age, and, if we're lucky, you and I are still going to grow older, but will we like it?  Do we have a choice?

Consider the alternative!

One way or the other, whether we live to the Psalmists' ideal age of 70 or 80 "by reason of strength," or Moses' purported age of 120-well, we're going to need to learn "how to grow old and like it." And it's upon this daunting task that we shall focus our thoughts this Shabbat evening.

Our patriarchs and matriarchs and their children, as reflected in the book of Genesis, seem to have experienced their aging in different ways. For instance, Abraham was always so strong-willed. Sarah was crushed and, according to a Midrash, actually done-in by the traumatic events that took place between her husband and their only son, Isaac, on Mt. Moriah.

Isaac was apparently physically, if not emotionally, impaired from that experience on the mountain.

Jacob could have been the poster boy of well aging. As a child and young man, Jacob was wily, ambitious, intense. Later in life, Jacob became all the more the tenacious survivor, facing in his old age not only physical infirmity, but also enormous personal loss, heartache, disappointment, and challenge.

And just like our ancestors, do you know that each one of us will also be different in terms of how we age? We'll differ in our physical, material, emotional and spiritual resources, our quirks of personality, our strengths of character, our will to prevail, or our readiness to submit.

Ms. magazine editor and author of nine books, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, has written a book called Getting Over Getting Older. The book was written after Ms. Pogrebin looked at herself one day in the mirror. She says,

• She was agonizing over her chin which had somehow melted away by the time she turned 50.
• She looked at herself in the mirror and realized that, as Gypsy Rose Lee had noted:  "I have everything I had 20 years ago, only it's now all a bit lower."
• She hated those hot flashes, even though for feminists they are referred to as "power surges."

What was it that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said about himself?  He was on a train and became so flustered when he was unable to provide his ticket stub when asked to do so by the train's conductor.

That's alright, Mr. Holmes, you don't need a ticket. I recognize you.

To which the jurist returned:  "My good man, the question is not where is my ticket.  The question is, where am I going?"

It's really easy to get into a funk when talking about one's aging. But there's another side to it; there really is. I think it was the great Longfellow who suggested:

Age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as evening twilight fades away,
The sky is filled with stars invisible by day.

Youth is such a wonderful thing.
It's a shame to waste it on the young!

But still we had better keep in mind what philosopher Martin Buber counseled:

Getting older is a glorious thing,
so long as you haven't unlearned
what it means to begin.

I wonder if you ever read any of the writings of Henri Nouwen? Nouwen was a monk who truly wrote like a poet. He died at far too early an age, just a few years back, but not before offering us this thought:

Aging does not need to be hidden or denied, but can be understood, affirmed and experienced as a process of growth given to us by God by which the mystery of life is slowly revealed to us.

Aging. . . is in no sense a punishment from on high, but brings its own blessings and a warmth of colors all its own. . . There is even warmth to be drawn from the waning of your own strength compared with the past - just to think how sturdy I once used to be!

Haven't we sometimes wondered at the wisdom and utility of taking and investing precious time to wage a fiercebattle with age?  The average woman spends ½ hour a day on tending to her face? One woman in five spends an hour a day before a mirror.  Is it worth it, I ask, fully aware that cosmetics for men have never been more popular than they are today?

Do we really want them to say when they look into our coffin, "My God, he or she looks ten years younger!" Or would we rather have them say, Well, he or she led such a meaningful life and left a deep footprint in the sands?

For us as Jews, this time issue-how we spend our precious time-is of paramount importance.

• Time consciousness defines our Shabbat and Chagim.
• The Torah's very first word is a time reference: "In the beginning. . . ."
• The Talmud begins with the words - "From when. . . "
• We count the days of the Omer, 8 days of Chanukah, 7 days of Passover, 7 days of Shiva.

Comedian Woody Allen is fond of saying:

I don't want to achieve immortality
through my work. I want to achieve it
through not dying.

Her answers?

One, limit one's fear of dying and realize that, hey, every life is ultimately incomplete. So, do good work for as long as you can.

Second, get some real exercise besides the unwholesome kind, you know, jumping to conclusions and swimming against the tide.

Third, add life to your years even if you can't add years to your life. Be luminous with age-a steady, glowing light within deriving from a passion for life; have a fire in your belly, and a goal still to be tackled.

And fourth, grow closer to the ones who really matter, and forgive, if not forget, all the folly and the foolishness of the past.

"Growing Older and Liking It?"  Well, for those lucky enough to reach a ripe old age, what's the choice about liking it?

Let me close with this story I heard only recently. There was an older couple, well up in years but still very much with it, who drove off one day to the hardware shop near their summer home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in the Berkshire Mountains.

The wife now does all of the driving as the husband suffers from severe arthritis. And this particular day, I guess the fellow took a little longer than some felt reasonable to open his car door and get out of the car to return something to the hardware store. Younger people in their BMWs and Lexus SUVs were impatiently honking and obscenely gesturing for the man to get on with it.

But instead, he turned in disgust to address all these assembled yuppies who were shaking their heads and now lowering their windows. The old fellow explained in a shrill, emotional voice:

I've got severe arthritis and I move
pretty slowly. But she, indicating his
red-faced wife of many years behind
the driver's wheel-she's got a bad
batch of hemorrhoids!