My friend Ali was stunned to learn that I was 71, he thought I was about 50 and was genuinely shocked to learn he was a generation off. That’s right, I said, I’m old.

Last night, I read a book which referred to one of the characters as being “an old man now, he was 71.” I’m reading a mystery in which the once tough private detective is 71, and he regular ponders suicide, musing that at his age, there is not much point in working or living any longer.

How is one to process this harsh way of looking at aging. I like to think of it as the only remaining acceptable kind of bigotry, older people are absent from popular culture and many workplaces, thus are inviting targets for people who still need to feel superior to someone else.

I am liking getting older, I find I am happier and wiser and more productive than when I was younger, when I was sadly preoccupied with rage, ambition and dominance. I like to think that as I get older, I actually know something, some of the bad genes just die off, and of course, there is life, which will beat me to a bloody pulp if I get to be too smart for my own good.

As one gets older in our country, you start accumulating doctors like sports teams accumulate players. There are no more wise Marcus Welby’s to tap your heart and say, hey, you need to take it easy now. Instead, specialists see me once or twice a year to check me out and see how I am functioning with diabetes and heart disease.

One of my favorite specialists – I never really see them long enough to get to know them, or vice versa – has a routine. She comes into the examining room and looks at me.  She always makes some time to talk to me, she wants to know who I really am as well as what my cholesterol level is.

“You look great,” she said last week, as she sometimes does. “You look very healthy to me.” Since she hadn’t examined me or looked to study any data like the male doctors too, I laughed and asked her what this diagnosis is  based on.

“Well,” she said, “I look at the tests, but mostly I look to see if you look vital to me. I look at your color, I watch for your sense of vitality, I pay attention to the energy coming off of you. And I’m never off, people who are sick usually look sick, people who are usually healthy look healthy. It’s a spark you give off,  you seem very much alive to me. That is a sign of good health.”

And then she takes her tests and looks at her data, just to be sure. And I was healthy, she said. This time, we talked about things, women do take more time than men, for sure. I will never see a male doctor if I can avoid it.

My doctor asked me if anything was bothering me, anything that I needed to talk about.

I said there was one thing. Once in a while, I said, I felt drowsy – I take about a dozen different kinds of heart and blood pills – and I take a nap.

She looked at me, waiting for the next click. So?, she asked.

Well, I said, I never needed to take a nap before, and I’m wondering why I need to take a nap sometimes now..

She laughed. “Jon,” she said, trying not to laugh. “You do know you’re 71, don’t you? And that  you had open heart surgery four years ago, and have diabetes?” Yes, I said, I do know that, not sure where this was going.

“I have 40-year-old patients who take a nap every afternoon when they can, there is nothing better for you that. You race around all the time doing a zillion things, I gather, and good for you for taking a nap. I’d recommend you doing that every day.”

She suggested that i didn’t really know where I was in life, I didn’t know that at my age, I might sometimes need to take an afternoon off, or better yet, set aside an  hour a day for a nap. I admit this shocked me and got me to think.

I don’t want to take any afternoons off, I said, but I get the nap idea. I wish more people had a doctor like this, health is many things.

Let me ask you a question, she said. What keeps you vital and healthy? It’s not just medication.

I liked that question, I have been thinking about what health is, apart from the tests and data and numbers doctors use. We are not encouraged to ask those questions of ourselves.

Well, since you asked, I said, I work every day to feel gratitude for the small things in life – for good friends to have dinner with, for talks with Maria, for snuggling in bed, for walking with dogs, for writing on my blog, for taking pictures, for eating  a small sugar-free chocolate with raspberry jelly inside, for making love, for a few days of vacation, for the soft whinnying of donkeys wanting a carrot, for photographer’s light, for my work with the Mansion residents and the refugees.

I could go on and on, I said.

I’m grateful for the company of people who like me, choose gratitude over bitterness and offer hope and inspiration instead of argument and judgment.

“When you talk of vitality,” I said, “I think of the light.  I am always trying to claim the light, so that I will find myself becoming more radiant, even as I get older.”

Great, she said. You are obviously healthy.