The longest lived person in modern history died at 122 years of age. The longest lived man died at 116. I plan to live in three centuries. Please read this carefully as I said in not for. As I was born in 1961 I need only stick around until January 1, 2101 to fulfill this not so preposterous ambition. If I make my goal I will be about 100 days shy of 140 years which is only 18 years past the current record which was achieved by a woman born almost 100 years before I: I really think Ive got a chance at this! Of course I do not plan on having 60 years of decrepit old age: Oh, no! I plan to have 80 years of mid-age and a sharp downward spiral at the very, very end culminating in my death on New Years Day. I have some good reasons, as well as some pipe dreams, as to why I think I can do this. First of all I chose my parents and grandparents well. All lived, or are living, into their eighties. My grands were all born in the 1800s and lived well beyond the average life span and my parents were born in the 1920s and either are still with us (Go, Dad!) or made it to 88 before passing away. The pipe dream part is largely the work of two writers; Robert Heinlein, who lived to 80 years of age and Isaac Asimov who died at 72. Both of these writers put an absurdly optimistic spark in me to reach a very old age in a high state of vigor. But lets look at this from a practical perspective. People are living longer and we know a lot about what we should do to keep both mortality and morbidity at bay. If you havent joined the Blue Zones movement I urge you to check it out and make some lifestyle changes that will both enhance your everyday living and extend your prospective death date. There are myriad health issues that can be avoided, treated, postponed or eliminated by taking proper care of self and I try pretty hard to bear these in mind when making my day to day decisions in life. If Im going to live in three centuries I want to do it under my own power, not as a pile of meat that doesnt even know its alive! So when I make friends with high school aged kids I think to myself, My God! These may be the folks I consider to be my peers in another 80 years so Id better cultivate some good ones! If I live well into my one hundreds Im going to have to rethink what it means to have age-mates! Oh, and one more thing. Just because Im planning on being here a long time that doesnt mean that I plan on postponing all my fun for the indefinite future. Life is what you make of it and what you put into as well as how many hours you spend on this earth. I just try to remember to have fun in ways that bring me life rather than shortening it. I hope some of you choose to join me in caring for self and sticking around a long, long time because I understand it gets awfully lonely being immortal; even if its only for two life times rather than an eternity of them.
Posted on: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 00:26:01 +0000
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