Appointments with a doctor always make me nervous. Even when they are routine checkups, like the most recent one, my anxiety mounts with arrival at the clinic.

On this occasion my blood pressure has shot up to new heights, with the diastolic figure (the lower one) breaking the hundred barrier for the first time ever. “White coat syndrome,” they call it, but they could be wearing purple and it would still happen.

Why such anxiety? It’s elemental, irrational, based, I suspect, on fear of them finding something dire, an unknown lethal enemy lurking within my organs that will sooner or later do me in.

I always had fantasized that by this advanced age of mid-seventies, a kind of statute of limitations would have taken hold. This concept I imagined as working to quiet anxiety with arguments such as this: “You have lived longer than 95 percent of human beings in the history of the world, so why should you complain about the prospect of your life coming to an end?” But rationalizations like this never work.

Other professionals at the clinic, as they record my weight and height, undoubtedly see me as just another 73-year-old male but my primary care physician knows better, recognizing me as a unique, not to say peculiar, person.

By now, she has attended to my health for some fifteen years and we enjoy an excellent working relationship. Long on a first-name basis, we show patience with one another: I did not even mind her being a half-hour late for this appointment and she, for her part, puts up with my chatter.

She inquires for my daughter, as I do for her son. She also asks if I am still writing and gently wonders how my wife’s recent retirement has affected our household.

All of this conversation much pleases me, not only for itself, but because I place greater confidence in physicians who know the whole person rather than just the physique. Perhaps she is helping me, even at this late stage, develop a greater appreciation of my bodily self.

Body image tends still to be a problem for me, though much less as I age. The injury to my left arm suffered at birth does not loom nearly so large in advanced years as it used to in adolescence and young adulthood. Growing older has its rewards, after all.

After finishing her top-to-bottom examination of me, my doctor tells me something I have never before heard from her: “You seem younger than your age.” These words refer not to an immaturity she has observed in me, I hope, but rather correspond to my own image of myself as a person gifted with unusually good health and a buoyant appreciation for life.

But still, the doctor prescribes a pill for blood pressure control. Because of a bias against medication, I feel reluctant to take anything, unless absolutely necessary. In this instance I will go along with her prescription, at least till the next appointment.

She also wants me to undergo a test, one that strikes me as especially nasty. Probably, I will resist doing it for a while, without telling her, and then, after summoning up the courage, submit to the unavoidable. Being a devout coward when it comes to medical procedures, I have to steel my soul each time.

Routine blood tests, also ordered by my doctor, will pose no problem for me so long as I can have Joe, a veteran technician, do them. He is marvelously skilled at finding small veins without poking around, probing for them the way physicians and others are wont to do. This friendly, beneficent Dracula makes of the bloodletting no ordeal at all.

Had this visit been anything other than a routine check-up, I probably would have asked my wife to come with me. It’s not just that she would be a strong advocate, if I needed one, but she would be there for me in other ways as well. Her emotional support might make all the difference were a dire diagnosis to emerge.

Even a routine medical exam makes us confront ourselves as body. Inevitably, you reveal yourself as you really are, at least as far as can be seen and measured.

There is undeniably something humiliating about it, even when the physician is thoroughly discreet and sympathetic. We are confronted with our bodily self in all its ridiculousness and vulnerability.

Even though this latest check-up was quite upbeat, I do not feel complacent about my health. “The center does not hold,” the poet Yeats said in a different context, but the statement applies here too. I await the inevitable next crisis with a mixture of resignation and hope.

And, always, the question of identity lurks just offstage. Who am I, this embodied ego? How can my spirit be so intertwined with this physical structure?

Richard Griffin

“These are not easy days in which to stand up and be counted as a Catholic in Boston.” These words, written by the pastor of my church, appeared in our parish bulletin last Sunday, understated testimony to the pain, confusion, and anger felt by so many people in our faith community.

Just that day, reports of two more priests accused of sexual abuse against children had emerged, bringing past seventy the number of Boston Catholic clergy thought to have committed this terrible crime. Making matters worse, the Cardinal Archbishop, by his own admission, had assigned priests with a documented record of pederasty to positions in which they could victimize even more children.

Growing up Catholic in Boston suburbs, I never imagined the existence of such crimes. That priests would violate the innocence of young people in this way lay outside my mental horizons.

Later, I went to a high school where the faculty was made up exclusively of priests belonging to the Archdiocese and, though I had an unfavorable opinion of some as teachers and mentors, I never heard of any one of them showing the least sign of sexual impropriety toward me or my fellow students.

This continued to be my experience in adulthood. All during the years when, in my first career, I belonged to the ranks of the clergy myself, I never had any knowledge of sexual crimes against children.

Recently, however, I have read reports about crimes attributed to some priests of the archdiocese with whom I was acquainted. The graphic details of one priest’s alleged criminal activities have hit me hard because the actions were so sordid, evidently damaged so many children, and violated the trust that many of us had in him.

What does it mean for people in later life to have their certainties exploded, as many of us have through these revelations of evil?  How can we cope with massive disillusion in matters of crucial importance to us, such as faith in the Church and trust in its ministers?

Having our confidence in sacred persons and institutions shown to be undeserving ranks as one of later life’s most upsetting experiences. No wonder newspaper photos have shown senior members of parishes in tears when revelations about their pastors are made.

When our devotion turns out to be without foundation, we can feel at sea, deprived of our bearings. The scholar Peter Marris, in a new book treating  meaning and purpose in later life, writes that “the loss of this assumptive world is deeply threatening, even if nothing outwardly has changed.” He compares the experience to a death in the family that can throw us into sudden crisis.

But I believe it is also an opportunity for possible breakthroughs toward deeper meaning. I believe that, for Catholics reeling from unwelcome disclosures about the Church, the current crisis can lead toward some valuable outcomes, both for ourselves and for our faith community.

The revelations of corruption among church leaders can serve as a powerful reminder that religious faith is directed, not toward human beings, but to God. One of my favorite sayings of Jesus applies here. Correcting a young man who called him good he said: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.”

It is possible to come out of the crisis with a purified faith. Discovering the radical thrust of what Jesus said to the young man can help strip us of illusions about the integrity of human beings, even sacred figures in priestly vestments and bishops’ mitres ordained to lead the Church.

On the community level, the anguish of Boston’s Catholic people and those in many other places raises urgent questions that seem not even to be under discussion by Catholic leaders now:

Should the Catholic clergy be exclusively male? Why should not married people be priests in the Roman Church? How can lay people exercise greater influence in the Church, instead of being dominated by clerics? What changes need to be made in the Church’s teaching on sexuality?

As to the first two issues, it is hard to believe that women, were they in positions of pastor, would have behaved the way so many men have done. And married clergy might have been less likely to abuse children, though that is less certain.

Readers of a certain age may remember how, in the middle 1960s, the church adopted far-reaching changes that showed remarkable creative energy. The Second Vatican Council, bringing together bishops from all over the world, surprised everybody with its willingness to alter many long-established ways of thinking and acting.

Now may be the time for the Church to show bravery and vision similar to that evident at Vatican II so as to set right those elements of the institution that cry out for change both in the Boston Archdiocese and elsewhere.

Richard Griffin

Asked how he feels about growing old, Bill Hamill invokes one of his many  sayings: “Whom the gods love grow young, they don’t grow old.” Then, playfully, he adds: “As a man becomes older, he becomes more delectable.”

These upbeat responses typify this 76-year-old street singer of songs primarily from the 1920s to the 1940s. In three-hour stretches, he belts them out to the wonderment of passersby in Harvard Square. His unabashedly in-your-ear  voice, often in high falsetto, carries across the sidewalk to the surroundings.

Six feet tall, 200 pounds, arrayed in red flannel pants, winter boots, green cap down over his forehead, broad face, and two pencil-thin mustachio lines, Bill loves to entertain the passing world. He knows 160 songs by heart and only rarely forgets any of their lyrics.

Students he considers his main target. Of them he says, “I’m bringing a sort of a mirror of what they are doing. They are actually falling in love and I’m bringing love songs. You see them holding hands as they walk by and I’m singing love songs.”

Bill has been performing in the Square for only the last seven years, but singing since he was a boy growing up in nearby Chelsea. When World War II came along, he joined the Navy and was sent to Bethesda, Maryland. After a medical discharge, he went to art school, traveled widely, and then came to Cambridge.

There he met a millionairess who taught him part of his guiding philosophy. “She gave me insight into the fact that what is money compared to love,” he recalls appreciatively. “I wanted love, I wanted art, I didn’t want money,” he adds.

Besides being a romantic, he also shows himself a patriot. The first song he rendered on a cold winter afternoon last week was “America the Beautiful.” Later he drew  “The Star Spangled Banner” from his repertoire and performed it with the same earnestness. When singing, he sheds all inhibition and lets go with abandon, often transfixing those who hear his voice.

Where does he get the chutzpah to set up his equipment on a public sidewalk and sing out so boldly? At the beginning, he confesses having felt “a little bit” embarrassed but, by now, “I’m completely relaxed.” No one harasses him: his Cambridge Arts Council badge, purchased for 40 dollars each year, makes him legit.

Some people like him a lot. A middle-aged woman who did not give her age evaluates Bill enthusiastically, “I think he’s great, I’m a vocalist myself.” Jason., 20-something, offers a less committed evaluation: “He’s something different.”

But Bill does not depend on his reviews. He loves the songs behind the sheet music covers lined up against the wall:  old favorites such as “My Foolish Heart” with Dana Andrews and Susan Hayward; “At the Balalaika” featuring Nelson Eddy and Ilona Massey; “Babes In Arms,” with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland; and “Folks Who Live on the Hill,” by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein.

Among the composers Bill likes best, Jerome Kern tops the field. But he puts in a fervent plug for obscure composers who wrote great songs. No one remembers the writer of “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” or another WWII song “There’ll  be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover” but they remain outstanding pieces.

After a lifetime of what he calls “running around,” Bill is glad to be settled in his chosen community. “Now I realize there’s no place like home,” he says. “I can be happy and revel right around here without going to the so-called enchanting places that people rave about.”

But he believes in good exercise. This he gets by riding his bike around the Boston area. “I’ve been cycling every day for the past 67 years,” he claims, not without some hyperbole.

He also exercises by pushing his song kit along. This cart comprises his microphone, sound system, and props. In addition to the sheet music covers, these latter include a toy cat and other animals. Assembled in one package on wheels, this material provides him with resistance exercise when he goes back and forth to his apartment some blocks from his performance sites.

As indicated earlier, this flamboyant gentleman trusts to his sayings. He can produce a quote or an original aphorism as commentary on almost any phenomenon. “I’ve studied quotations and proverbs, and the wisdom of the old sages in a concise way,” he explains. However, he adds: “I haven’t studied too much beyond that.”

Sayings about love loom large in his repertoire but they often veer sharply away from the romantic. “There’s a saying, leave women and they follow you, follow them and they leave you.” Interpreting this statement, he applies it to himself: “I’m a real Don Juan, I can do without women.” But then he laughs.

Richard Griffin

A speaking gig in Florida last weekend has given me contact once more with America’s future. So many people down there have reached age 65 that one gets a glimpse of how the whole country will look in the year 2030. By that time, one in every five of us Americans will have attained that level of longevity.

Certain highlights of my short stay at a church in West Palm Beach stand out boldly. It was impressive to see large numbers of retired men and women come to worship in various degrees of vigor. Some elders obviously enjoyed bustling good health; others displayed bodies in notable disrepair.

I focused with admiration on one couple in particular, she painfully shuffling along hobbled by the effects of stroke, while he cheerfully provided major support, smiling all during his wife’s uncertain progress toward the entrance.

Evidences of such courage buoyed up my spirit. Another retired couple were helping an adult son walk, the latter having been crippled by the effects of a brain tumor. Scenes like these justify what one of the hymns sung in that church calls the world – – “this valley of tears.” Yet I had to admire the way these people struggled with their disabilities.

That is presumably a major reason why they come to church in such large numbers. They want to understand what later life is all about and to derive spiritual strength for its trials. Presumably many learn to balance their experience of physical decline with interior growth. They may even lay hold of the mystical dimensions of their faith and move to a new level of spirituality.

That level finds expression in a prayer I quoted in the course of one talk. The Jesuit anthropologist, Teilhard de Chardin, whose cult flourished in the 1960s, wrote: “O God, grant that I may understand that it is you (provided only that my faith is strong enough) who are painfully parting the fibers of my being in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance and bear me away within yourself.”

Not everyone would be comfortable with this mystical language but it expresses the faith of a profound priest-scientist who loved both God and the world of nature.

Another aspect of church life that caught my attention once more was its intergenerational quality. My gerontologist friend Harry Moody likes to point out the power of the church to unify people of various ages. He thinks that it is probably the social institution that does this best and I am inclined to agree with him.

Although the average age in that church was high, still I was glad to see families with young children as well. In fact, at one of the liturgies we celebrated the baptism of a seven year old boy with a name redolent of French history. Clovis was baptized to the acclaim of all the other parishioners, some of them presumably in their ninth and tenth decades of life.

Not all the images from my brief gerontological survey can be called upbeat. One late afternoon I was invited to an early bird dinner at a nearby restaurant. Next to our table was a seventy-something couple, the man facing me. All during their meal I watched to see if he would say anything to his companion. But, so far as I could discern, he spoke not a word to her throughout.

He downed his red wine, fed at his pasta, all without speaking a word and never changing expression. This couple, perhaps married for decades, offered a striking image of later life lived in quiet desperation.

A biblical reading from the next day’s liturgy struck me for its dynamic contrast with that restaurant scene. In the first book of Samuel in the Hebrew Bible, one reads of Elkanah, the husband of two wives.

One of these wives, Hannah, weeps because she has never conceived a child. To console her, Elkanah then says, “Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?” Not all husbands, it would seem, have attained Elkanah’s level of spousal love.

At a party in another setting down there, I talked with a 70ish woman who spoke of past and future surgeries for herself and her friends. Referring to those who needed and need replacements, she said “We all have hips.” She did so with a spirit blithe enough to retain cheerfulness in the face of burdensome physical problems that accompany aging.

A three-mile walk early one morning with a Florida friend helped implement my ideal of both physical and spiritual exercise every day. Moving along at a brisk pace with an old friend made the experience even better for me as we reviewed personalities and shared events.

However, as often noted previously, I was struck by how few of my age peers were out walking that morning or, for that matter, people of any age. Unhappily enough, pessimistic studies of American exercise habits would seem to be based in reality.

Richard Griffin

“Will you please keep it down? I’m trying to die here.” This is what my friend Hob told a group of Emergency Medical Technicians and others who were huddled around him as he lay on the floor of a restaurant. The EMTs must have felt astonished to hear a man joke as he prepared for death.

Hob thus came close to fulfilling a hope that he had voiced years earlier. When a friend asked him how he wanted his life to end, he had answered thus: “I want to die laughing.”

Death was no stranger to Hob. After all, he had done a kind of dress rehearsal for death by living for years with Alzheimer’s disease. His son, using a different metaphor, called it “Dad’s final exam.” With a typical combination of wit and seriousness, Hob himself named this affliction “horseblinders.”

His lightheartedness, mixed with a growing inability to say exactly what he wanted, often issued in striking phrases. The one I remember hearing with most poignancy came when he could not recall what he wanted to tell me. He motioned toward his wife and said: “She is my memory.”

Till close to the end, he retained enough control to create puns and use other figures of speech about his plight, a practice that helped make him what one family member calls “a beautiful model for living with illness.” A few days before that Thanksgiving, he announced: “It’s time to jump ship.”

These facts and many others about Hob emerged from a memorial service held three weeks after his death at age 78 on Thanksgiving Day. Like other friends who took part, I came away from this celebration of his life with a much better knowledge of a man I had thought already well known to me.

For the last several years we had been members of a meditation group, together with Hob’s wife Olivia and two other friends. Every few weeks, the five of us would gather in the mid-afternoon in his living room. After shared greetings, we would choose someone to softly ring a small bell and, sitting in a circle around a lighted candle and flowers, we would close our eyes for a half hour’s silence.

For someone like me who finds meditation difficult, it was helpful to feel the support of others as I turned inward. Afterward, we would exchange reflections on recent events in our lives and whatever insights we might have gained from the meditation. At such times, I especially valued Hob’s wide spiritual experience.

Hob was a true spiritual adventurer. In search of enlightenment, he and his wife Olivia traveled widely and absorbed the riches of various spiritual traditions. Hob became close friends with Father Bede Griffiths, an English Benedictine priest, who established an ashram and lived like a Hindu holy man in India.

Thich Nhat Hanh was another major source of inspiration for Hob. This Tibetan Buddhist monk, in fact, ordained Hob as an elder spiritual teacher, a role that held great meaning for him. Hob’s wide experience was a source of wonder for me because of my limited knowledge of traditions different from my own.

Friends who spoke at the memorial service brought out other facets of Hob’s life from times before spirituality became so important to him. It struck me that he was known by different first names at different points in his life. Those who knew him growing up tended toward “Harry;” others used his formal first name “Harrison;” and those who became familiar with him in his maturity tended to call him “Hob,” as I did.

Who but his oldest friends would ever have known about Hob being captain of the rifle team, a boy who broke the record in his prep school by scoring 496 points out of 500?

From his two now adult children at the service we learned about Hob as a father. His son referred to visitors who used to come to their home: “The presence of so many wisdom figures at an early formative age was his best gift to me.” His daughter recalled their many family trips: “We sang rounds in the car.” Until this time I did not know that singing was one of Hob’s favorite activities but I should have guessed this of such a buoyant personality.

If this brief remembrance of a multi-faceted friend leaves the impression that things were easy for him, that would be a false impression. Like the rest of us, Hob often found things difficult, especially in his last years. Though he could joke about death, he admitted how scared he sometimes was.

Yet I will remember the characterization given by one of his friends who spoke of his smile, his sense of mischief, his humor, and his “joy of life.” And I will especially cherish his unending search for light.

Richard Griffin

Winston Churchill first became Prime Minister of Great Britain when he was 65 years old. His accession to the leadership came after a long career filled with adventure. Some of his countrymen were unhappy about his becoming their leader in 1939 but he had become the indispensable man at a time of crisis unprecedented in his nation’s history.

These facts, familiar to many Americans of a certain age, came vividly to mind this holiday season as I read the new biography of Churchill by Roy Jenkins. It is a weighty volume, both literally and in the history it records, written by a now 80-year-old veteran of British public service.  For me, reading it stirred up memories of an era momentous in itself and also important in my personal development.

Looking back to my teenage years, I remember once seeing Winston Churchill. On a visit to the United States, he came to M.I.T. in 1949 and took part that university’s  Mid-Century Convocation. Unfortunately, I have no memory of what this eloquent man said on that occasion but I do vividly recall the difficulty with which he extricated himself from a low-slung chair. His physique by then made it no easy task to stand up from that position.

As a inveterate reader, I have often found much pleasure in history and biography. This particular book is so rich in event and personalities that it held me rapt as I read. Though familiar with much of the story recounted here, I felt a new relish in reliving imaginatively sagas that used to grab my attention each day in the newspapers.

The central character, Winston Churchill, is now regarded by many as the greatest Englishman in history. His accomplishments in staving off defeat in World War II will no doubt continue to stand out for their brilliance. At the same time, he never stopped being human with the faults that entails.

Churchill was also one of the most fascinating characters in his zest for life and the eccentricities that, in a nation famous for them, made him stand out. His love for food and drink and his habit of working in bed still endear him to readers as they did to his countrymen and us Americans during those war years.

It has often been said of the man that, if he had not become Prime Minister, he would have gone down in history as a magnificent failure. His record in several other government posts before the Second World War was marked by serious mistakes. He was a risk taker who often plunged ahead in actions that proved unwise. Notable among these blunders was the invasion of the Dardanelles in 1915 when, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he was largely responsible for what turned into a costly fiasco.

But from the moment that Churchill took over the government in 1939, his courage and stubbornness started to make a difference. Those who listened to his speeches then as I did will remember their eloquence. The power of his words was sufficient to rouse a disheartened nation to resistance in the face of an expected German invasion.

He was sometimes lucky, too. The rescue of some 335 thousand British and French troops from Dunkirk could not have happened if the German army had advanced to the coast and subjected those allied forces to attack.

The sneak Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor he recognized immediately as a benefit for Britain. He felt confident that this raid, so devastating to the United States, ensured eventual victory because it brought America into the war on the British side. His repeated efforts to convince Roosevelt to support Britain had become no longer necessary.

Churchill’s story becomes poignant as the allies’ war effort becomes more and more successful. By 1944, he realized that the Soviet Union would play a dominant role in Central and Eastern Europe, with Poland and other countries becoming subject to its will. He also became painfully aware that, for all its heroic success in winning the war, Great Britain had lost irretrievably its own empire and much of its economic power in the world.

He would live to be 91 years old. In the postwar years he received widespread recognition for what he had accomplished for his own country and  the western world. However, he also tasted the bitterness of rejection when his party was defeated in the first postwar national election. I remember feeling uncomprehending, in my naiveté, that the British could prefer someone else to this great lion of heroic accomplishment.

The world of 2002 now seems far removed from the World War II era. It has become fashionable to call the heroes of that time “the Greatest Generation.” That term, in my view, tends toward reverse ageism, in unduly favoring the old over the young. But Winston Churchill and those that he and other leaders led into battle then can surely inspire both young and old with what they achieved against great odds.

Richard Griffin

Do you think that anyone alive in the world today will live to be 150? Do you know anyone who would lay money on the table as a bet that it will happen?

Until I heard a talk by a reputable scientist last month, I thought that no level-headed professional considered it within the realm of possibility. After all, the longest recorded life span thus far is that of Jeanne Calment, the feisty French woman who reached 122. It seemed to me quite unlikely that any person now alive would beat that mark by 23 years.

But biologist Steven Austad from the University of Idaho thinks otherwise. He believes that someone now alive will live to see 150; he has also bet a colleague $500 on this outcome. You may, of course, look on this as a wager without risk since the bettor does not consider himself to be that record-breaking person.

Scientists like Austad believe that longevity breakthroughs will happen, not because of diseases being eliminated but because science will succeed in slowing down the rate of aging. He himself predicts that in the near future medications will come on the market that will make us age more slowly and thus live longer.

Another scientist of some repute, William Haseltine, goes further and sees a day when human beings can become immortal. Commenting on stem cell research, he has been quoted as saying: “Since we are a self-replacing entity, and do so reasonably well for many decades, there is no reason we can't go on forever.”

Thus some scientists take as goal the extension of human life as far as possible. In laboratories across America they are at work with fruit flies, mice, and other forms of animal life, experimenting to discover how the limits of our species can be lengthened or even eliminated.

For most of us, however, the more important question must be the desirability of life extension. Do we really want to live to 150? Or 500? Or forever, on this earth?

Speaking for myself, I am surprised and happy to have reached this new year of 2002. When you consider all the threats to human life, my arriving at 2002 is no mean feat. My instinct is to thank God, my parents, my country, members of my extended family, friends, and many others for making it possible for me to see the second year of the new millennium.

Those who dream about the fountain of longevity seem ignorant of what later life is like for large numbers of Americans right now. In this country of affluence unsurpassed in history, many lack enough money for their basic needs. Using the official federal poverty rate, the United States Census Bureau counts 5.6 million people over age 65 as poor or near-poor.

Also elders galore receive sub-par care in hospitals, nursing homes and other institutions; various forms of dementia such as Alzheimer’s threaten the brain power of many.

In the conditions of contemporary life, should anyone wish to live to be 100, much less 150? I readily grant the exceptions to my attitudes. One of my family’s old friends recently celebrated her 100th birthday and, I rejoice to say, continues to flourish. She types her own letters and stays in vital touch with family members and friends.

I am aware also of the Centenarian Study at Harvard in which other people over age 100 were shown to be thriving. As a society, however, we are not prepared for large numbers of people to live far beyond the average. We will have to make many changes in both values and societal arrangements before we are ready for a longevity revolution.

Meantime, and for the foreseeable future, I recommend my philosopher  friend Harry Moody’s “culture of finitude.” By this he means the acceptance of limits that are built into the human condition. He dismisses as nonsense the modish view that “we can be anything we want to be.” Life remains fragile, Moody emphasizes, and we must accept vulnerability and resist the dream of lasting forever.

Some scientists have the wisdom to remind us that the human body was not designed for indefinitely extended use. Jay Olshansky says that “we are living beyond our warranty period.” Our bodies are not perfect, he maintains, but “we are an incredible species and the things that go wrong are not our fault.”

I feel grateful to be around for this new year and to be quaffing a cup in celebration of its arrival. You won’t find me buying into longevity inflation any time soon. Nor will you see me swallowing the views of the so-called “anti-aging medicine” crowd. Rather, I rejoice in the gift of life right now and hope for future good years even if they do not come anywhere close to a total of 150.

Richard Griffin