- If I could go back in time and counsel my younger self, I would tell my younger self, "don't marry that man."

- Getting older means getting smarter, getting more experienced.

- In the next 10 years, I don't think I will be here.

I question whether or not I've accomplished enough - Before I go, I leave a good legacy for others.

(bright music) - Welcome to Getting dot Older, the new TV series where Americans over 50 share intimate, personal revelations about their experience of aging.

I'm your host, Roberto Mighty.

This is a new show concept involving your TV, and your mobile phone, tablet, or computer.

I created this project when I noticed myself getting older.

I had questions and decided to find out what other folks are feeling as we all age together.

The survey includes question number one, "What does getting older mean to me?"

Question number six, why, "if I could go back in time and counsel my younger self, I'd tell that idiot to..." Some of the questions are pretty serious, like question number 15: "My greatest regret is..." and so on.

I've conducted a bunch of in-person interviews to get things started, but going forward, I want people like you and your friends to go onto our website and send us your answer videos.

We'll publish excerpts from your videos online, and some clips will get on TV.

We're also interviewing people using home video conferencing.

More on that later in this episode.

Now, on with the show, this is it.

(bright music) In this episode of Getting dot Older, we're going to meet Mike, the cattle rancher, Dianne, the archer, Karen, the drummer, Ken, the rower, Danny, the tailor, Kim, the tennis player, and Karmen, the singer.

(gentle piano music) (class chanting) Be aware we are here, standing without fear.

- Whoo!

(drumming) - Karen is a community builder, performer, and social practice artist.

She is such a jolly, cheerful person.

So I asked her question number two: "When I was younger, I used to think that older people didn't X.

Now that I'm older, I know that I..." - When I was younger, I used to think that older people didn't play.

They didn't laugh.

But now that I'm getting older, (laughing) I know that we were dying to laugh.

We really want to laugh.

We may look like we're serious, but we really dying to play inside.

- Karen definitely brings out the inner child in adults.

So I asked her a question number nine: "When I was a child, I wanted to be... Now I am..." - Yeah, I think as a woman, you know how it was always, that's kind of the path that... A road to success is that, of course you get married, of course you have children, of course you have a family, of course you have the career.

I grew up in the 80s, as well, so that was a time when women were said we could do anything we wanted, which meant to have the career, have the family, do yoga, be 98 pounds, whatever.

(laughs) And be beautiful at the same time.

And of course, no one can really do all of those things at the same time.

Or maybe you can, but it takes a lot of work.

And I was always someone that wasn't really interested in having my own children.

And at various times in my life, that's been kind of hard.

I've definitely had folks question like, "why don't you have children?"

I remember a taxi driver from another country just turned to me and just sort of say, "what's wrong with you?"

And I really decided I wanted to do the work I was doing.

I really liked my life.

And there was a time at once when I wanted to have biological children, but that relationship ended with my partner.

And I had also thought a lot about being a foster parent or adopting, too.

And so I never felt like having a biological child was something that was a "must."

- Sometimes during these interviews, people are moved to share stuff beyond my questions.

Karen surprised me with this statement.

- There were times I questioned whether or not life was worth living, and whether or not there's anyone who really cared about me.

And there was a time in particular, in grade school, that I feel like the one person that really cared about me was my next door neighbor, who was outside watering her flowers every day when I was walking home from school, and she would just sit and talk to me.

I would stand with my books, and she would be watering her flowers.

And she would just ask me how I was, and how was school.

And I feel like, during that kind of low point in my life, she was one of the only adults that I could really, that I knew was looking for me and looking out for me.

(soft music) - My name is Mike Bowen.

Along with my partner, Julie Brown, we run North Hollow Farm in Rochester, Vermont.

(cows mooing) - Mike is a livestock rancher.

He's also a husband, father, and grandfather.

I asked Mike question number one: "Getting older means..." - Getting older means getting smarter, getting more experienced, not having to repeat all the mistakes that you've already made, hopefully.

- Mike seems to have it all.

A great ranch, fresh air, a business he loves, and a great family, but I wanted to dig deeper.

So I asked him question number 10: "The most profound life transition I ever had was..." - Well, I guess the biggest life transition I've had would be when I farmed for years with my dad, up until 1990, when he died suddenly.

He was 69 years old and he was in good shape, so it was a complete surprise.

And so then all of a sudden I went from farming with him, this partnership with him to more or less on my own.

That was a huge transition.

(rooster crowing) - I asked Mike question number 22: "My advice is..." - Life's short, and so you got to find something.

It's too short to do something you don't enjoy doing.

So if you're lucky enough to spend your life doing something you love doing, and you can make a living doing that, that's about as good as it gets.

- Question number three often gets people talking.

"The one thing I want to do before I die is..." - The one thing I want to do before I die is have North Hollow Farm be successful.

And if I'm lucky enough to have the next generations carry it on, and that would be I guess my biggest dream.

(cow mooing) Religion is something I guess I've never really thought much about, I'm not a religious person.

I guess I believe that nature is the all powerful force in my life and in everything we do, as far as the farm goes.

And that's what controls everything.

I mean, I have no problem with any religion, but that's just how I look at it, I guess.

(cows mooing) (gentle music) - Dianne is an actress, director, dancer, and archer.

She's also a wife, mother, and grandmother.

I asked her a question number six: "If I could go back in time and counsel my younger self, I'd tell me to..." - If I could go back in time and counsel my younger self, I would tell my younger self, "don't marry that man."

And I'm not talking about the current husband.

I'm talking about the first one.

I would say, baby, you have concerns.

Listen to your heart.

Don't feel you need to push yourself into a corner.

Because honestly, that was 20 years wasted of my life.

(rapid drumming) - I also asked Dianne question number one: "Getting older means..." - Getting older means... You're not gonna like this one.

Becoming invisible.

(laughing) Because you... Well, actually I feel that my needs for companionship from other people, maybe younger people, are not really looked at as valid.

I think the worst day of my life was when somebody started calling me Ms. D. And then everybody started calling me Ms. D. (laughing) And I was like, damn, you can call me D, but why you want to call me Ms. D?

You know, "Ms. D." Like, that sounds like that's an old black woman with something on her head and an apron or something, kind of like, that's Ms. Jane Pittman.

She's a "miss," you know.

That's not me.

So I feel like what I have as a person kind of fades away.

And I just get this like, "old folk" over my head, right?

(soft music) (indistinct conversation) - Ken is an affordable housing and community development lawyer.

He's also a husband and father.

I met Ken out on the river where he regularly rows, first thing in the morning.

Rowing is a pretty tough sport.

And after a while, I wondered if Ken might have some special challenges.

So I asked him question number 20: "My medical issues are..." - Yes, I have some health challenges, which I've managed by rowing and doing other activities that keep me active.

It's a question, I'm told, of muscle memory.

(somber clarinet music) - [Roberto Mighty] So, "My greatest regret is..." - My greatest regret is not having any regrets.

Actually, the problem with regrets, or the path not taken, is that you think in your imagination, that the other paths that you didn't take would be smooth and without any obstacles, but that's not so.

And you can imagine it being smooth, but you can't project what obstacles you might've faced had you done something else in your life.

- Question number 10 is: "The most profound life transition I've ever had was..." - My son, middle child, died at age 18 from cancer.

He was sick for four years, and we spent four years together, very close company.

And the hardest thing I had to do was say goodbye to him.

And if you were asked what words you would say to your child if you had only 30 seconds left to do it, it was a great challenge.

And I tried to ease his mind from not feeling that he disappointed anybody by succumbing to the disease.

And he died in my arms, and I have a deep wound from missing him.

(birds singing) (soft music) - Nice serve!

- Do you think it will taste good?

- That is up to you.

(indistinct conversation) - Kim is a skier, tennis player, and winter lover.

She's also a mom.

Kim is a very upbeat, optimistic person.

I wondered about her background.

So question number nine seemed appropriate: "When I was a child, I wanted to be... Now I am..." - When I was a child, I guess you just always assume that you'll grow up, and get married, and have children, and have a career.

And I don't have a career anymore, and I'm not married.

So if I could look back at that, I would definitely be sort of disappointed in myself.

And you know, I'm divorced twice, which I don't talk about very often.

I left both husbands because I felt each marriage was pretty horrible, and I was pretty miserable.

And so I don't talk about it much, because when I do, people look at me and they think, "wow, what's wrong with you?"

Other than my close friends who know, and know that I'm normal, but to talk about it, people think that it's a little odd.

So if I looked back at my normal childhood growing up, and where I would be, I definitely would not be where I am.

And also living in sort of an attic apartment, even though I like it here.

I grew up in a house, lived in a house when I was married.

- One of the things that I notice is driving at night.

I think I used to feel fine driving any time, but now I notice when I'm driving at night, I'm a little more apprehensive, a little harder to see, a little hard to picture where all the cars are.

And I feel as if I'm one of the slower people in the road.

So I think that's a good sign of aging.

- I asked Kim question number three: "The one thing I want to do before I die is..." - Gosh, before I die, it's somewhat of a loaded question, since I have cancer.

This is going to make me very sentimental.

But I don't know if I only have a few years left, so I think about it a lot.

And I think traveling with my kids is what I want to do most, and spend as much time as I can with my kids.

- [Roberto Mighty] Do you want to say anything else?

Pretty much that, because when I think of how much time I have, I think of it as two or three years, so that's not a lot.

And when you're on chemotherapy, you don't have the energy to do everything you want to do.

And right now I'm on chemo.

I have my hair because there's still a lot of drugs out there where you don't lose your hair.

Two years ago, when I was on chemo, I lost all my hair.

It was a very different feeling, because now people look at me and think, oh, you're fine.

You're not sick.

And I'm still full of cancer, and I'm on chemo until the end of November.

- So this is my daughter, Michela.

Her wedding was July 3rd of 2010.

So that was Hailey, which would have been almost six years ago.

And my mother.

(soft music) - Danny is a tailor and a chef.

In his apartment, he makes prom dresses and head wraps out of t-shirts.

I asked him question number 16: "I'm most proud of..." - So my family, I never told my family that I was gay, and no one ever asked me, they just accepted it.

I guess they said "child, Stevie Wonder could see this".

So I never had that problem.

They accepted me unconditionally.

And I used to hang out with my aunt, who was a wonderful storyteller.

And I think that I get that from her.

And I used to hang out with old people, so I was very wise and witty at a very young age.

And I guess that gay just came out and they knew it.

You know what I mean?

And the only one I told was my sister, and before I could tell her, she said, "I already know."

- Question number 23 is the flip side of question number 16: "I am most ashamed of..." - What am I ashamed of?

Myself.

I'm ashamed of myself that I'm not financially savvy.

Okay?

'Cause I just realized that I wasn't, and I could have fixed that, but now I think its too late.

So it's like being at a cocktail party with nothing to talk about.

And that's what bothers me.

It really bothers me.

It really, really bothers me, because there's another world that I didn't even know existed, although I knew it existed, but I was never into it, so I didn't know nothing about it.

Now that I was been exposed to it.

I just feel, God, I feel deprived, angry, ashamed that I don't know.

- I also asked Danny question number 22: "My advice is..." - My advice for younger people is to get off them damn cell phones and live your life, but that's not going to happen.

I did a party last night, and they had a table with all the young kids, and everyone was on their phones.

And this is the new norm.

- Karmen is an artistic director, teacher, singer, and founder of an opera in New York.

She's also an educator.

- [Roberto Mighty] "The thing I hate most about my age is..." - The thing I hate the most about my age is how people out there are thinking about people who are getting older.

Why?

Because sometimes they think that you cannot do the things that they can do.

So it's that state of mind sometimes worries me.

- [Roberto Mighty] Would you like to sing a little bit?

Would you like to give us a sample?

Is that something you would feel comfortable doing?

I think people might be interested to hear you sing a little bit, but I don't... (laughing) - Well, in Spanish or English?

- [Roberto Mighty] Cualquiera.

- Cualquiera.

Okay.

Any one, that sounds well.

(singing in Spanish) What about that?

- [Roberto Mighty] (laughing) Oh, that was fantastic!

Bravo, bravissima.

That was great.

Okay, thank you so much.

- [Roberto Mighty] Thank you so much.

- Whatever we think about our parents once they're gone, our ideas about them can sometimes deepen or even change, perhaps surprisingly so.

I asked Karmen a pair of questions that usually gets people talking.

Number 11: "I'm like my parents, in that..." And number 12: "I'm unlike my parents, in that..." - My parents passed away a long time ago.

I had a close relationship with them, with both of them.

My mother taught me a lot of wise things.

Actually, the strength that I have nowadays is like, I look back and I reflect, gee, you know, if mami did all those kinds of things with what she little had in her physical strength, because she went through a lot of illness, she was really sick for a long time, but still I could see her with a smile every morning, getting up every morning.

And more than her words, what I remember was her life, the way that she kept on going no matter what.

My father, in the sense my relationship with him, was that he used to tell me, "sometimes you got to think very well what you're going to say so you would not offend anyone."

So it's like both of them balanced me throughout my life.

And now it's like, I have that in my heart, and in my mind.

And it was the most beautiful relationship I ever had.

The best friends of my life were my parents.

- [Mighty Voiceover] Getting dot Older is conducting some interviews online.

This allows us to share more stories from all over.

Jan is an executive in California.

In our video conference interview, he told me about his background.

- My name is Jan, and it's spelled J-A-N. And I spend most of my life telling people, my name is not pronounced "Jan." (laughing) It's pronounced "Yon."

Y-O-N.

So my parents were from what's now the Czech Republic.

And I grew up in New York, in Queens, New York.

- Now, I happen to know something else about you, and that is that you really into classic cars.

So for all of us gear heads and car nuts out there, go ahead and make me sick.

What do you have in your garage?

- And so I have a Jaguar.

In fact, I just brought it in for some minor recommissioning, and I enjoy driving it.

It's what they call the toupee version, not the open seater, because in Detroit, in the 1960s, it was a little (speaks foreign language) to drive what they called the foreign car at that time.

(exciting music) (bright music) - This season on Getting dot Older, we're going to meet Pat, the restaurateur, Regge, the professor, Catherine, the author, Sheila, the administrator, and Christie, the ice skater.

Thanks so much.

Really looking forward to hearing your responses.

Go to our website and fire up your cell phone, or your laptop, or whatever device you have for recording yourself.

And I'm really looking forward to hearing your questions online.

(bright music)