The oldest person in Australia recently died at the age of 112. She was born in 1914, before WWI even began. But in the story I was reading there were a couple paraphrased snippets from an interview she gave a couple years ago that resonated and perhaps, shows the wisdom of a hundred plus years lived through some pretty extreme events.
Move all the time, both physically and in your thoughts.
You can’t led old-fashioned ideas take over your life. You’ve got to live today, by today’s standards. And keep going with it, and be happy with it.
Pretty good advice.
The first one I can fully get behind. Never stop moving. Keep active physically, mentally, emotionally and socially, because these four areas make us whole and the better we can maintain each, the fuller our lives become.
the second one I half agree. Because while I fully believe that we shouldn't let old-fashioned ideas take over our life and we should continually evolve ourselves toward better outcomes, I don't think that means living by today's standards. At least. not the standards we have built for this current day. We have degraded because instead of continually evolving for better, we have practiced to keep accepting worse. We might have made ourselves more individualistic and less reliant on others through consumerism, but we have also largely degraded ourselves as individuals across those four factors that make us whole, that enable a great life. Obesity and disease, mental illness, emotional instability and social disconnection are advancing, not reducing.
We should not be happy with the current course we are on.
Today's standards in terms of human advancement and wellbeing are nothing to be proud of. Yes, technologically we might be moving ahead in leaps and bounds on the back of AI and automation, but how it is being used and what it is being used for, should shame us. We have all this potential, yet it is directed toward what?
Entertainment? Distraction? Violence?
Profits.
She lived 112 years, saw wars, pandemics, and some of the most unbelievable technological advances, but in that same time - people haven't changed. Behaviours have, but people at their core are the same as we were a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand years ago. The difference now is that we have a host of tools to takeover our faculties, to give us the opportunity to avoid and not to learn.
We have tools that mean we needn't move.
And this is where we go back to that first quote. Move all the time, both physically and in your thoughts. We have the history of the world and everything we have ever learned as a species at our fingertips. We have access to healthcare, nutrition, sports and exercise. Yet, we sit, scrolling phones, staring at screens, consuming passively, mindlessly, without thought, without action, without growth.
That is not a standard worthy to live by.
It doesn't matter if you live 20 years, a hundred years or a thousand years; if it is spent passively and thoughtlessly consuming, what kind of life does it become. Is it worth living? Longevity is meaningless without purpose, so instead of pushing the boundaries of how long we can can extend our lives, we should be trying to push how well we we can live our lives. Don't be happy with what we have, but learn to be happy with what we do day to day to make our lives and those of the people we care about, better. Because if we do that, as long as everyone is building healthy relationships that share compassion and love, everyone's life improves just by everyone going about their day, helping themselves and those closest.
Especially in the age where technology is going to make many of us redundant, we should be pivoting away from the current standards of blind profit unattached to human wellbeing, and toward wealth of experience and human growth across everything that is important for us to live a great life.
No matter how long we live.
And no matter how long we live, it is never very long in the grand scheme of us.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Be part of the Hive discussion.
And you may be rewarded.
