A dying uncle once told me on  his deathbed (My Uncle Harry) that getting older was simple: “You figure it out or just die with nobody noticing.”

Thanks, Harry, a frank talker and thinker. If you can hear this, I’m working on it.

I was a teenager at the time, so I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. When I passed 75, I figured it out.

The moment I discovered my call in life – a gift of aging – the biggest questions were answered. I knew in my heart where I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to do; the fog lifted.

I have discovered that I am much improved by what I am learning and doing now.

I learned the most from the idea of self-giving, which was new to me.

I saw more about life, mine and others,  and I was stunned and humbled by it.

I learned what success was and discovered that life’s only real success requires that I end it with a willingness to learn, something I rarely felt in school as a confused Dyslexic.

This was where I belonged. I will always want it, but never completely have it; I’m much too flawed. It’s the search that matters. I think we all know what the ending is.

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The only real requirement for success in old age, I decided, was that I end my life still learning, still giving, still growing, still brooding, reaching for what I knew from the beginning was the unreachable dream of my heart.

To become what I was born to do, what I am capable of doing, is, in the end, good for the soul as well as the work itself. I never felt that when other people – editors or the people who had to like what I wrote – decided what I had to write and what others had to like.

It changed me.

As I got older, I was free to follow my call. I need no one’s permission to write and take pictures freely and in the way I wish.

This space and liberty allowed me to grow like mushrooms in the forest after a rainstorm.

Happiness was a lot less and a lot more than I ever imagined.

I am coming to learn what Aristotle said and meant when he said that life was about living well and doing good. I’m getting closer to that all the time.

Aging is about doing something worth doing and doing it to the utmost. I want to live to the highest boundaries of my humanity and make life human for those around me.

It’s a purpose and a journey for me. When I think I have finally achieved that goal, I will know that I have failed.

There is no rainbow at the end of this journey, only more work, more thought as to what it means to be human. I don’t seek perfection, just to be better.

The only rewards are satisfaction and peace of mind. Sometimes now I feel both. And it feels good. I am no squishy do-gooder.

. Anger, selfishness, anxiety, and arrogance still have a big place in my life.

But it gets quieter and smaller all the time.

I have to never stop working at it.

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I want to give thanks for choosing to write about aging to author and lecturer and spiritualist Joan Chittisterand the late Trappist Monk and author Thomas Merton. Their writing and deep spirituality have guided me all along the bumpy way and still inspire me today and to the end. My wonderful wife does the same thing.