Ensconced inside his 55th-floor office on the eve of his 40th birthday, the attorney was depressed and refused to see anybody. A no-nonsense legal secretary morphing into a mother figure got wind of what was going on and stormed into his office.

“It is rumored that you will be turning 40 tomorrow and you are depressed about it!” she said. The attorney nodded in assent, dropping his head to the floor.

“Darling, you don’t have to turn 40 if you don’t want to,” the woman scolded. Trying to no avail to push open the glass windows, she banged on them and said, “Jump, jump!”

Within minutes, the man who had been in the dumps for so long blossomed into one of the most energized and grateful people. From that day forward, he has embraced every birthday, happy for being alive and healthy.

Why are we as a society so pre-occupied with staying young? We will never fully know the answer to that question as there are merits and demerits to being young or old.

Who would ever deny the fact that being younger comes with endless stamina and energy that seemingly never get depleted? How about the incessant thoughts of invincibility or of opportunities galore?

You don’t need to look far these days in America to know that old age is viewed negatively by a lot of people. It’s a known fact that everyone wants to live a long time, but nobody wants to get old. Anti-aging products are commanding billions of dollars annually as we strive to reverse the aging clock.

It would seem like just yesterday when many of us were the youngest members on a particular choir or on the job. How we couldn’t wait to get older!

Frankly, once upon a time my obsession with staying youthful kept me from truly living. I worried to no end that I would go the way of two of my friends who died in their early 20s. Living to see my 25th or 30th birthday was a pipe dream!

Many of us recite this vignette as gospel truth: “Life is a series of crises cleverly connected by the mundane of the everyday.” What a waste, though, to see life only through that paradigm.

Changes in our perspectives will allow us to embrace all the positive things that come with aging gracefully. Life is to be enjoyed; it is to be lived to its fullest.

So to all those people lamenting gray hairs, age spots and wrinkles (“knowledge lines”), find ways to embrace them. Remind yourself that you are at a place where millions have never reached.

There’s no way under the sun would I trade place with an 18-year-old today if I couldn’t haul along the wealth of knowledge I’ve amassed all those years.

While youthfulness is commonly viewed with this triumvirate — vim, vigor and vitality — there are lots of merits to growing older.

Rabbi Joshua Haberman lists six of those benefits: Tranquility, cooling of passion, submission to what you cannot control, willingness to be wrong, increased appreciation and gratitude, and the love of family.

According to Napoleon Hill of “Think and Grow Rich” fame, many entrepreneurs did not make their mark in their 20s, 30s or even 40s — Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg aside. If you want evidence, just study the biographies of America’s most successful men and women.

The evidence will show that the period from age 40 to 60 is the most productive age of American industrialists and financiers. Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie and James J. Hill are but a few of them.

One seasoned female said it best about getting older: “I have never really thought about the process of aging because each day I look at myself in the mirror I can truly say that I’ve earned my life. Aging is simply the answer to a life worth living.”