Moti Mizrahi

For today's senior citizen, the moniker itself conjures up tired men and women sitting on park benches feeding pigeons, a memory many hold dear as it invokes images of a previous generation. That is simply not a valid description any longer. 

Though many of today's seniors began life before there was rock music, air conditioners, microwaves ovens, credit cards, SUV's and computers, they watched all these innovations come to birth and have embraced many of them. In fact, in a 2004 survey, Pew Research reported that nearly 50% of all seniors own computers and are on the Internet. 

Today's seniors live active lives. Some are working on second or third careers because working isn't something they do just to earn money; it's a way of taking all their accumulated knowledge and applying it to projects they love and believe in. 

Some are focusing on their equity portfolios not just to insure provision for their children, but to plan and prepare for their own future in regard to housing, mental and health issues. 

Some are seeking to advance their education in all things from getting their doctorate in History to golfing and dancing. 

Though today's seniors grew up during a time when cigarette smoking was considered fashionable, when Coke was a just a mixture of water, sugar and bubbles, when McDonald's only served a few hundred thousand, today's senior is filled with a wisdom drawn from a life lived during a time when music, art, fashion, space travel, technology and medical renaissances converged. 

Today's senior is physically healthier than ever, having grown up doing jumping jacks with Jack LaLanne, Aerobics, Jazzercise and now Pilates. Today's seniors can rely on great medical advancements that make once life threatening events an outpatient treatment. And today's seniors are positively spirited as a result of enhanced physical and dietary regimens, and enriched medical wonders that include such things Viagra. 

While today's seniors were born before there was touch tone dial, CD players and the Internet, it was members of today's senior population who invented these things. Many of you are still productive in the work force today, working hard and inventing our future. 

When you think of today's seniors, you don't think of white haired old men and women with walkers. You think of Sean Connery, Barbara Walters, Johnny Carson, Michael Douglas, and the millions of amazing resilient men and women that make up the most distinguished members of our population.