I cannot understand why some Americans are so afraid to be happy and healthy in their old age. As an avid reader, I am constantly reading self-help books. As an avid transhumanist, I am constantly reading books about living healthy and living long. As an avid seeker, I am constantly trying new ways of doing things, including reassessing and changing the things I put into my mouth each day and the exercise regimens I follow.
I realize that many people are brought up in belief systems that espouse that existence here on Earth is just a game God plays with us all. If you practice a belief system that runs along these lines, I respect you. However, I do not understand why it is so hard for some of you to respect me.
I am in Dallas this week (my job takes me around the country to various corporate offices). I was standing in the hallway waiting on an elevator to take me down to lunch today when I was accosted by a co-worker who asked me what I was reading. The mere title of the book Healthy at 100 was enough to cause her eyes to glaze over.
She looked at me as if I had told her the book was an instruction manual for gang raping her entire family while forcing her to watch. I could see an immediate flash of hostility and she quickly blurted out something to the effect of “Never mind, I don’t want to know anymore.”
Is it so wrong to want to be healthy at 100 years of age? Just because most people don’t achieve that I should give up on the idea and resign myself to a short life with a few miserable decades at the end? I can understand that people get set in their reality and resign themselves to whatever mystical set of rules they believe the universe will follow. It still makes me sad.
So few of us want to explore the boundaries of what it means to be human.
If you want to be Dead at 80, then by all means, don’t read books like Healthy at 100. But don’t judge me for wanting a more appealing outcome.