A few years ago, 41 senior citizens from the American Midwest landed in Boston to check off a few things from their bucket lists.

In no particular order here was their list: splash in the Atlantic Ocean, eat fresh lobster, stand before a lighthouse and drive through little New England towns dotted with the reds and yellows of the soon-to-be-sleeping maples.

Mostly, they wanted to feel like they were 30 again, hoping the playfulness of the coastal landscape would wake up the sleeping children inside of them.

Between the 20 couples, they had, collectively, 1,000 grandchildren. I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but it is not. They were a religious bunch of the Christian faith, and having big families is something they believed in. If you do the math, you’ll see that many of these couples bore eight children, and those children went on to have eight children themselves.

I was their humble tour director charged with making their Atlantic dreams come true.

One day, a woman got on the bus and announced that her 62nd grandchild had been born that very morning. You can imagine that I spent many days looking at pictures of bald-headed babies on their phones.

In addition to fawning over their grandchildren, I made sure they were having a wonderful time. Most had never been out of their own state, and seeing an ocean was to be a highlight in their lives. They’d saved for many years to be on this trip, having gotten past the glorious but humble experience of raising children. So, this was it for them. This experience they had planned was a way to reward themselves for all of their hard work and dedication.

I’m not sure what magic transpired, but they seemed to shed 30 years as the days went on. They climbed up steep walkways, took long walks through hill and countryside, and woke up every morning at 6 a.m. to drink coffee and enjoy their friends. They smiled a lot, barely napped, and had wonderful dispositions.

They were the happiest people I’d ever met.

And they taught me a very important lesson: there is a way to age gracefully.

I’d never been a fan of getting older. I’d always thought it was a rather difficult process, what with creaking bones and broken hips, it didn’t seem a fair way to reward people for living through the difficulties life imposes on them.

But my senior citizens from the Midwest showed me that getting older is a privilege, and one that not everyone gets to experience.

Today, there are about 40 million Americans over the age of 65 and its been shown over and over again that despite aging bodies, seniors actually enjoy greater well-being as they age.

And what does that tell you? It means that physical health isn’t entirely necessary to be happy.

One day, on this tour of happy seniors, we finally made it to the Atlantic Ocean on Cape Cod–the wide open, wild sea on the outer Cape. I stood on the boardwalk and watched my group as they threw rocks into the waves, and pranced on the beach, and were chased by the surf.

And for a moment, I could see the children that they used to be–the Willys and the Bobbys and the Suzys all playing in the sand. They knew this was the first and the last time they would see the Atlantic and they sought to enjoy every last minute they were there.

And it seemed to me, they lived their whole lives as seniors this way-treating the seconds that passed as a giant treasure. They got more out of a moment than some people get out of a day.

I thought about getting older-how we often lament the empty nest, and the certainty of change, and the natural ebb and flow of life. We spend a lot of time wishing to have our million moments back, to do things differently this time.

But we don’t stop growing, even when we’re growing old. When we get to the point that we realize we have more time behind us than we have in front of us, that’s when we need to head to a place like the Atlantic Ocean, or engage in an activity that defines our greatest unrealized dream. We’ve always been tasked with forging new paths our whole lives, and it shouldn’t be any different when we hit 60.

I sent that group back home on a plane, their pockets full of beach rocks and sea shells and specks of sand between their toes.

And I thanked each one for showing me what it’s like to feel so full of life that there isn’t room to yearn for anything more.