The ultimate life has no limit – in theory!
Imagine a life where money is not a limit to your personal creativity and ingenuity.
Imagine a life in an organic relationship that goes beyond the limitation of death.
Imagine a life where your longevity spans beyond all of your personal creativity and ingenuity.
It may be strange to many of you that I am sitting here thinking about my great-grand children – yet, I am in the queue waiting for the promotion to the grandfather status.
Let’s not just fantasize about the future – apply simple math to see if it is possible for most of us to live out this dream.
Or any dream that matter to you – LONGEVITY is the requirement for any dream to come true coupled with grit, ambition and determination.
The Math!
The example is me, as a male, but the discussion applied regardless of genders.
I graduated from college of engineering at the age of 23. Migrated to the New England area and found a girl friend – who became my wife within eight months later.
Together and with diligence, in two years we were able to put away enough saving for one year worth of living expenses for both of us.
I was 25 by then and my wife was 22. Together, we decided to celebrate our relationship with precious gift – the 1-year after tax saving gave us the confidence to execute the plan.
At 26 years old I witnessed a miracle of life – our daughter came to join our family of two.
I am going to make a statement and leave it as food for thought for those who wanted to have a family early in life – the next 18 years were the most purposeful, most meaningful and most joyful years in our lives thus far.
There were life challenges as expected and as expected we persevered due to our youth and the biological motivation to protect and care for our daughter. We were young and fearless – the fundamental advantage for having children early in life.
Currently our daughter is 24 years old and planned to have family and children at the age of thirty.
Assume that the plan played out as clockwork – I will be promoted to the role of grandfather at the age of 56.
Let’s forecast that my future of grand children will take the same amount of time to have a family and children as her mother – I will be promoted to the role of great grandfather at the age of 86.
The average life expectancy for males in the United States in 2018 is 76 and 81 for females in 2018 (source: https://www.statista.com)
My personal calculation requires that I have to live 10 years beyond the average population.
Here is a million dollars question – what is the plan to live to 81 years of age or longer with the probability of success of 90 percents or greater?
With finance it is quite simple. If you want to have enough money to live out the rest of your life from an arbitrary age there is two game plans.
Strategy one, research the average income and multiply it by 25 and that is the targeted savings (this formula will work in the USA where the inflation rate over the year is 3 percents and the ordinary income tax range from 10 to 35 percents on the average).
Strategy two, multiply the annual expenses in your household by 25 and that is the targeted savings.
The difference between the two game plans is that the second requires the investment of efforts and ingenuities within the home boundary where each and every one of us has the control and an intimate understanding of our circumstances.
In actually reality, it is better to start with strategy one and over time make transition to strategy two – majority of us are more average than anything but unique.
I am wondering if these two strategies will be the solution for the longevity question.
Slowly, I did the research on the average health of the population over the years and concluded that our day to day health and well-being is governed by two distinct aspects of ourselves –
- Our moment to moment mental state – mind
- Our moment to moment physical state – body
Depression, Alzheimer and dementia in general are the diseases of the mind that will determine the quality of life and ultimately the span of longevity.
High blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes are the ravagers of the physical body that will determine the quality of life and ultimately the span of longevity.
Countries which share the similarity in the economic model and the customary diet will face these two hurdles on the path toward longevity.
Let’s first exam the day to day physical state!
The physical, body aspect of ourselves can be defined as mostly mechanical, skeletons, muscles and specialized parts – all working in concert to keep us alive at every second.
As with any mechanical system, the most important external feed is the fuel – low quality fuel is the substantial degrading factor to the system.
With regard to our diets, there are two observable facts.
First, our modern day diets are packed with high nutrients in comparison to ancient ancestors of the past – obesity in the population is slowly becoming a normalcy.
Second, in the mix are the unfortunate side effects of the engineering advancement in food production. Chemicals which are too toxic for the ancient and slow evolved mechanical system – cancers, strokes, and heart attacks are becoming the prevalent killers.
As of the 21st century, the only effective mean toward longevity for the human mechanical system is the combination of diets and exercise.
Diets and exercise are billion dollars industries. Yet, they seemed to be ineffective in the majority of cases.
Keep it simple – in just two steps, a lifestyle can be constructed to ensure any of us will have the longevity of the average and beyond –
- Design a lifestyle that you have the time to cook and consume foods from raw ingredients.
- Have a rigorous and challenging exercise routine scheduled – at minimum one hour per day.
This is easier said than done for majority of the population. Not because the challenge is beyond the skill and capability of the population, but flaw is buried deep within the human nature.
The animalistic nature that we inherited from the prehistoric ancestors more than often lead to reactive action and behavior – dominated over proactive and futuristic planning solutions.
We will only take action when we are in a bind!
Let’s move on to the day to day mental state!
It is the law of nature dictated that we are all mechanically age with time. However, it is our mental states that determine the quality of our lives along the way.
Physically, there is not much of a difference in the baseline health of a ten years old child and the thirty years old of the same person 20 years later – however, the mental state of a younger person clearly more resilient than that of his/her future self.
The mental resilient in the ten years old instances of ourselves were the result of living in the moment and live with full passion – this is “flow” as often described by psychologists.
If you have young children you may have noticed that they have to be constantly reminded to eat, to drink and to sleep – far too often, they lost track of time and complete unaware of their own physical aspects of themselves.
In the day to day living, the optimal mental state depended on the amount of time our mind gets to stay in the playground flows with passion – the theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking, would not have the impossible longevity without the passion for his work.
For a healthy mind is also can be extremely simple, but admitted hard to execute.
The keep it simple strategy involved three fundamentals –
- Eight hours of sleep a night.
- Stay away from brain altering chemicals in drugs, foods and beverages.
- Engage with challenges that are in-tuned with personal skill and capability.
Since the mind is the central command for our entire being. It controlled all the mechanical aspects of our system.
With longevity as a goal, Stephan Hawking had clearly demonstrated that as long as our mind is strong and healthy – our body will follow.
Let’s play the game of life!
