Here is a terrific idea for those of a certain age. Have a pajama party with close friends at a distant and beautiful location of at least three nights duration. Why three nights? Because it takes that long for normally reserved people to open up and speak freely about life as they have known it. Why pajamas? For the same reason. After a day filled with enjoyable activities, like sightseeing, shopping and dining, climbing into pajamas and meeting in the living room to chat goes a long way toward facilitating informality and frank exchange.

And why have such an experience? Because after a lot of years of living, seniors are expected to have amassed some wisdom with the answers to questions that habitually occur to us. One thing is sure: Probably no two people will have the same answers to all the questions, and hearing the different perspectives is thought-provoking and sometimes even comforting.

Now let me be clear. I am not suggesting orgies in the basement. I am saying that much has changed over the period of our lives, and those of us who have seen those changes can understand each other and even commiserate. It’s nice to be understood. It’s valuable to hear how others have dealt with the same opportunities and challenges.

What are some of the subjects that might be discussed?

Death is certainly one. We all face an end to our lives. How do we regard the inevitable? Are we afraid? Probably not so much. With age comes acceptance to a large degree. Is there an afterlife? A purgatory? Will we again be with our loved ones? In fact, do we believe there is a God? And what is the purpose of life? There are no bounds to the scope of discussions. The subjects just flow from each other.

Then there are the endless conversations about children and maybe grandchildren. How have they fared? How much should we help them? What is in store for them? What problems do they have? Have their marriages held together?

There are the huge and sometimes incomprehensible changes in sexual mores and in family values. There are still some who reserve sex for marriage but not many. The word “dating” can have a different connotation than it did when we were much younger. Living together and having children without the benefit of marriage is no longer the object of shame. Yet it may be just difficult for older people to accept, especially if members of the family are involved in such arrangements.

The relationship between men and women and hence between husbands and wives has undergone revolutionary change. And the issue of rape has become public, especially rape on campus. There was no such mention by past generations.

Health issues are a perennial topic for conversation. Trading remedies, physician and physical therapist names, healthy tips for diets and dieting, exercise and stress reduction are common themes. Discussions of the outcomes from hip and knee surgeries and even dental implants fill the airwaves and can truly offer needed information and help.

Music is another area of tremendous change. What one generation danced to, another can find boring. But there is unending admiration by seniors for the younger generation’s mastery of cellphones, laptops and the Internet. Yet there are some older folks who adamantly resist texting.

The truth is that we all need support groups and affirmation. We can also benefit from well-placed critiques that can be more easily accepted from contemporaries. And there is always lots of room for laughter, even belly laughs.

Pajama parties can provide the context for such engagement. Besides why should only kids have all the fun.

Although I never her, I was the beneficiary of Nancy Reagan’s good taste. I was invited to the White House by President Ronald Reagan’s press office, my second visit after one during President Jimmy Carter’s term. The contrast between the two visits could not be more stark.

The former first lady died this week at the age of 94, outliving her husband by nine years. In reality she had started to lose him more than 10 years earlier in what she termed “her long goodbye,” as his suffering from Alzheimer’s disease carried him into his own world. Theirs was a long marriage in which they seemed devoted to each other, and she passionately protected him and his image as he moved from president of the Screen Actors Guild to governor of California to president of the United States. She said that her “greatest ambition” was to have a “successful, happy marriage.”

She may well have yearned for that as a result of her early childhood experiences. She was born Anne Frances Robbins in 1921, the daughter of Edith Luckett and Kenneth Robbins. Her mother was an actress and her father a car dealer who abandoned them shortly after she was born. When she was 2, her mother resumed her acting career. Then, when Nancy was almost 8 years old, her mother married a Chicago neurosurgeon, Loyal Davis, and overnight her circumstances reversed. Her life was now one of stability and privilege, and she went on eventually to graduate from an elite high school and then Smith College as Nancy Davis in 1943.

She might well have endorsed Sophie Tucker’s famous maxim: “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. … Rich is better.”

When Reagan was elected governor and the Reagans were expected to live in the governor’s mansion, which was at that time a run-down Victorian house on a busy, one-way street in Sacramento, Calif., she convinced her husband to lease at their own expense a 12-room Tudor house in a better neighborhood. Then, when Reagan was elected president, she decided to redo the private living quarters of the White House. She raised $822,000 from private contributors to do that, but she was severely criticized by the press.

Although she had made a number of worthwhile efforts over the years, including welcoming home former prisoners of war from Vietnam at a time when those who fought in the war were sometimes spat upon, and involving herself in a Foster Grandparents Program for mentally disabled children — according to an obit in The New York Times — she was generally regarded in the press as stylish but extravagant and aloof. She was petite, slender, exercised daily and wore expensive, designer clothing at a time when the country was still hobbled with the remains of the 1970s crushing recession. Her first public relations interest was not her own image but that of her husband.

So when she raised more than $200,000 from another contributor to buy a 220-place setting of new presidential china, the first since President Lyndon Johnson’s administration, she was most unpopular as a result. That seemed to reinforce her unflattering image.

Nancy Reagan as first lady traveled widely to speak out against drug and alcohol abuse, especially among young people, and she is the one who coined the phrase, “Just say no.” She also publicly urged women to get mammograms every year after she was diagnosed with breast cancer at a time when that disease was still whispered. And, as you might expect, she was a powerful advocate for new research into Alzheimer’s.

This is how she affected me. When our press group visited with President Carter, we were given lunch in a cardboard box that we held on our laps as we sat in a circle in the Oval Office. It consisted of two halves of different sandwiches, an apple, a bag of chips and a hardboiled egg. I clearly recall watching the president shaking salt on his egg and alternately taking bites. Although I was thrilled to be there and I appreciated the effort to project an image of austerity, I thought it seemed more fitting for a picnic on the lawn than one in the nerve center of the most powerful country in the world.

At President Reagan’s lunch, we ate in the East Wing at cloth-covered tables and were served white wine with our veal scaloppine on beautiful dishes. Now I am not particularly stylish or slender and certainly not a spendthrift, but I wanted to tell Mrs. Reagan, “Right on!”

This is the critical time, the time when those who cannot hold on any longer have fallen off their New Year’s resolutions track. That’s most of us. The best of intentions, articulated amid holiday cheers, have a way of trailing off in the cold light of January and February.

If you are among those committed few who are going strong and plowing ahead, congratulations. If, however, you are like the rest of us, weak but still wishful, I have some thoughts on the subject of resolutions. Statistics tell us that by Valentine’s Day, 80 percent of people who would like to improve their lives have given up. What we are not told is how many start again. Really, it not necessary for resolutions only to be made beneath mistletoe. If we peter out, we can pick ourselves up and begin anew. The pressure is off. And here are some tricks to sticking with it this time.

Don’t make unrealistic resolutions that are overwhelming. Want to lose 30 pounds? Losing weight is a common idea, but it is hard to break eating habits and it is a slow process. However, breaking the 30 pounds into smaller goals, like 1 pound a week, is doable. And a small success encourages endurance.

Try to find a buddy to lose weight with, even going to the gym together. Whatever your goal is, it’s easier with support from someone else and it surely is more fun. It’s harder to go it alone.

Some people might prefer to keep their resolutions private, in which case the buddy idea doesn’t work. There are some good reasons for privacy. Making public commitments can create too much pressure.

Or maybe you don’t want others to know how bad things really are and how much you need improving — if it isn’t already obvious. And then there are those who try to sabotage you, for whatever reason. It’s not pretty, but such urges exist in humans. Perhaps out of competitive motives or fear, you will be a different person and your adversaries won’t be worthy of you.

Attempt to make resolutions fun. Fix on what you will do or how you will feel once your goal is realized. The drudgery of getting there is taking you ever closer to your ideal.

Making resolutions is a little like making a to-do list. Try to limit the number to the two most important items at most. Otherwise life gets too confusing and energy is dissipated in different directions.

Finally, if you give up, start again. I have. When resolutions become habits, they will carry us to our goal. And habits are much easier to practice than that heavy, multisyllabic word, “resolutions.”