The recent death of the remarkable anthropologist, primatologist, ethologist, climate activist, humanitarian, and author Dr. Jane Goodall (1934-2025) is a huge loss to the world and to all those who have respected, admired and loved her for her foundational work with chimpanzees in Tanzania and her teachings about the relationship between the primate species and how we humans ought to regard who we are in relationship to the natural world. In recent years, she spoke in a series of interviews about aging and what was important to her that enabled her to live a life of meaning and significance that sustained her until the day she died this month. The following is a list of what she strove to do every day:

• Learn new things;
• Avoid stress by accepting whatever happened to her as a part of the natural process of living;
• Accept death as the next great experience;
• Spend substantial time in nature;
• Clarify her sense of purpose and strive to make a difference in the world;
• Walk and exercise;
• Eat a plant-based diet;
• Surround her life with animals thereby enhancing her joy, empathy and comfort (she loved dogs most of all);
• Take time to “step back, recalibrate, and maintain balance in my life”;
• Build strong relationships with the people she loved and trusted – family, colleagues and young activists in her Roots & Shoots youth program;
• Travel (she was on the road 300 days a year);
• Live simply without acquiring unnecessary things that cluttered her life;
• Feel gratitude for what she had without focusing on what she lacked;
• Be hopeful, optimistic and think positively. She once said: “Hope is what enables us to keep going in the face of adversity. It is what we desire to happen, but we must be prepared to work hard to make it so.”

As the “Baby-Boom” generation (those of us born between 1946 and 1964) enters our senior years (73 million Americans) along with those of older living generations, I offer the following quotations of writers, thinkers, and religious figures on the theme of aging. Taken together, I hope they are as meaningful and inspiring to you as they are to me:

“There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love.” -Sophia Loren (b. 1934)

“In youth we learn; in age we understand.” -Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916)

“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.” -Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“One day, you will look back and see that all along, you were blooming.” -Morgan Harper Nichols (b. 1990)

“The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.” -Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007)

“No one is as old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.” -Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

“Know that you are the perfect age. Each year is special and precious, for you shall only live it once.” –Louise Hay (1926-2017)

“The more the bodily faculties weaken and the fire of the passions subsides, the intellect is strengthened, its lights extend outward, its apprehension is purified, and [the soul] rejoices in what it apprehends. [This continues] until the…individual is advanced in years…[and] grows very powerful, and the joy in that apprehension and an ardent love for that which is apprehended grows [with it]...” -Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (AKA Maimonides or RAMBAM) (12th-13th century C.E.)

“Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.” -George Santayana (1863-1962)

Maria Branyas Morera believed her longevity stemmed from “order, tranquility, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity and staying away from toxic people.” –Maria Branyas died at the age of 117 (1907-2024). She was at the time of her death the oldest person in the world.

“A person is not old until his/her regrets take the place of dreams.” -Yiddish proverb

“You are only as old as you feel.” –President Jimmy Carter (1924-2024)

“One who greets an elder is as though s/he has greeted the face of the Shechinah [the face of the Divine].” –Midrash, Genesis Rabbah 63.6 (400-500 CE)

“Accept her counsel and do not despise her on account of her old age, for she has experienced many things and knows well how to dispense proper counsel. On this account, the sages of blessed memory have said: ‘An old woman in the house bodes well for the house.’” –Israel ibn al-Nakawa (14^th century CE)

“Scholars, at the time of their old age, decrepitude, and bodily deterioration, grow in knowledge, strengthen in intellect, and increase in perfection, as it says, ‘Wisdom is with elders and understanding comes with length of days.’” –Maimonides (12-13^th century CE)

“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.” -Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)