Today I saw a blog that gave some basic tips on how to live longer. Very sensible – cultivate family relations, have healthy living habits, and have a purpose in life. Interestingly, stress was not mentioned. Interesting because stress is supposed to be at the root of other fatal diseases – heart conditions, for example.
I went for a long, slow run in the rain today, and felt physically tired (it’s heavy weather and my legs felt heavy too). I got home and lit the stove, and have been feeling emotionally tired ever since. Old. Tired and old. This is not good – anyone who’s seen the documentary film “What the Bleep do we Know?” will realize how much our own thoughts affect our health. I don’t want to be old!
I phoned my sister in law to see how frustrated she is at the moment, waiting on the Canadian embassy in Beijing to finalise her student visa. A long and frustrating story! One result is that she and her husband (myh brother) are a bit stuck for ideas. If the visa doesn’t come through that scuppers their whole year. But, I sugested, isn’t that just another sort of opportunity? It’s difficult to see it that way when you’re banging your head against a thick, red-taped embassy wall.
During the conversation (where their year gets scuppered), age came up – are we too old to go back to school? What’s the right age to have children and what age is too risky? I’m older than they are, so am I too old to be venturing into reading law and trying a few exams? The thing is, if you decide you’re too old to start something, eventually you’ll figure you’re too old to start anything – including getting out of bed. My Mom takes that one quite literally – she makes sure to be up early each morning so she doesn’t waft around in life, now that her children are all grown up and she doesn’t have to be responsible for others.
Getting old can’t be staved off by Botox or facelifts, only by attitude. It would be foolish to say physical ageing doesn’t affect our attitude, though. Of course, if you suffer from arthritis or angina or blood pressure problems, that will affect your level of activity, which can be a bit of a catch-22, since and an active life helps produce the right brain chemicals (serotonin, for example, is produced during sustained exercise) to make you feel happier.
Yoga gives me a positive catch-22: My motivation for keeping up my practice derives partly from the knowledge that if, at age 70 or 80 I can still touch my toes, lie comfortably on my tummy, sit cross-legged and just maybe enjoy a shoulderstand or headstand, I’ll be physically independent. If I’m physically independent, I’ll be active, and will therefore probably have a sense of purpose to my life, since I’ll have the capacity to do stuff. So even if I drop dead of a heart attack some day, I’ll have lived well all the way through.
Ah, me and my plans. As John Lennon put it: life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. Just carpe diem, baby.
