Before the advent of television and the internet story tellers had a great and important role in our daily lives. Even radio was a story telling medium. There are fewer and fewer people today who remember listening with rapt attention to such radio programs as Sky King, The Lone Ranger and Grand Central Station just to name a very few. There were no pictures. You had to provide your own. We seem to have less and less need for imagination today than every before. We are dependent on others to help us picture events and stories. How many parents read to their children today? How many of us will have the pleasure of sitting in the laps of our grandparents and hearing stories of their youth?

Oh yes, we still tell stories but not the elaborate stories of the past. We tell quick vignettes or quick snippets from past events usually to others who participated in the event or occasion that is being remembered so the event or occasion can be relived, enjoyed again, laughed at again or cried about again. A useful exercise for all of us is to begin to pay attention to the stories we tell. You will find that you tend to tell the same stories over (and over) again. Ask yourself why. Is there something in those stories that is important to you? It would be good to know what it is. It may give you an insight into those important aspects or attributes of your life that need to be preserved and even enhanced as you age.

Journal writing has also become a lost art. Journal writing was more than just keeping a diary of the events of the day. Journals not only captured the events of the day but observations on those events and even, sometimes but rarely, lessons learned.

The intent for this section of the Getting Older Happens website is to capture stories that convey an insight or truth about aging that is important to understand and learn from as we contemplate our own aging. Hopefully the readers will share their own stories and the lessons they have learned about aging from those stories. These stories will be referred to and drawn upon in the other sections of the website to reinforce the recommendations being made there.