Bizarro world
Why are we trying to hack our lives rather than live them the right way?
Former US president Jimmy Carter turned 100 last week. It made headlines, naturally, given who he is and what he’s done. But he’s also a rarity: in a country with some 330 million people, only around 25 in 100,000 reach the century mark. Life expectancy in the US trails dozens of other countries and the same goes for longevity: Japan has three times as many people aged 100 or older, Romania and Portugal almost double the number, and a host of other countries outpace the US, from South Korea to Spain.
If this seems odd, you’re right. Surely the wealthiest country in history with the world’s best health care—at least for the far-too-few number of people who can afford it—would have citizens that live longest? And maybe it seems even more likely given the obsession many Americans have with the booming $1.8 trillion wellness economy, not to mention the Silicon Valley bros trying to outwit the Grim Reaper.
Yet the reality is very different because money can’t buy time. I heard an interview last week with Dan Buettner, who 20 years ago famously examined so-called “blue zones,” those regions of the world where the average number of people clocking the century mark is exponentially higher than average. His work boils down the secrets of a long life to nine principles (pilfered here from his interviews with Rich Roll):
Move naturally: Get more physically active by walking in the community, do manual labor around the house and yard, and grow gardens.
Know your purpose: People who know why they get up in the morning live up to seven years longer than those who don’t.
Down shift: To reverse inflammation related to every major age-related disease, find time each day to meditate, nap, pray, or commune with friends.
80 percent rule: It takes the stomach 20 minutes to tell the brain it is full, causing most people to accidentally overeat. Stop eating when 80 percent full.
Plant slant: Eat a mostly plant-based diet heavy on beans, nuts, and green plants.
Wine at 5: For those who have a healthy relationship with alcohol, enjoy a daily glass of wine.
Family first: Living in a thriving family is worth six extra years of life expectancy.
Belong: No matter which faith, studies show that people who show up to their faith community four times a month live an extra four to 14 years.
Right tribe: Friends have a long-term impact on well-being. Expand a social circle to include healthy-minded, supportive people.
If this sounds basically like the exact opposite of daily life in the US, you’d be right. It’s as though we’ve made the decision as a society to consciously remove these principles from our lives: we’re increasingly desk bound, lacking in purpose, and perpetually stressed. We overeat the wrong, highly-processed foods, and drink too much. And we consciously move away from family to homes that isolate us socially, while faith (in anything, except maybe disinformation) continues to erode.
Our solution? The aforementioned wellness obsession. We hit the gym a few times a week. Meditate. Go on yo-yo fad diets, or inject Ozempic. Use social media to maintain personal connections. We’ve adopted lifestyle hacks and medication as quick fixes, thinking that 30 minutes here and there will compensate for jettisoning the very way of life that would make hacks unnecessary.
“The core tenet of blue zones is if you want to live longer, don’t try to change your behavior, because you’ll fail at that in the long run. Change your surroundings,” Buettner says.
The life I lead has been top of mind for a while. I thought I’d want some space back east; room to roam and for my kids to explore. But a visit here in June made it clear that was the last thing I needed: it not only didn’t feel right, it felt positively terrifying. After the better part of two decades being increasingly isolated, what I wanted was community and connection; to feel part of a greater whole. I’m a city guy—or, for the foreseeable future, a close-to-the-city guy.
And if you look down Buettner’s list, you’ll see why community and connection is so important. In the places he identifies as the world’s five “blue zones”—the Italian island of Sardinia, Okinawa in Japan, California’s Loma Linda, Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula, and the Greek island of Ikaria—the prescription seems simple. Live in a tight-knit community, surrounded by family and friends. Walk rather than drive. Eat stuff that’s grown rather than manufactured.
It’s a lifestyle I feel when I visit family in Melbourne, where I eat like crazy and drop weight from walking. Where family and friends drop by. Where a quick walk to grab coffee ends up in a long conversation. Where you don’t have to plan dinner or drinks or some contrived social situation weeks in advance because your days are filled with them, without any real effort at all.1
The way we’ve collectively become more and more isolated and disconnected seems a recurring theme lately. American society is hopelessly divided, despite largely agreeing on most of the big issues. I’m stuck in a car conga line to drop my eldest at school, because no kids walk any more. Despite return to office mandates, more of us are working remotely, eliminating a critical source of human contact. I do a gobsmacked double take when I see kids walking together, without parents helicoptering over them.
I totally get it’s a classic response to aging to view everything that’s passed with rose-colored glasses. But even when I try to strip that bias away, I can’t shake the feeling we’re increasingly going backward on a bunch of dimensions that really matter. On the bright side, I’m not alone in fretting about this stuff. And on the double bright side, I reckon Elevator Girl and I may have found some likeminded people to share the ride to oblivion.
Those clever folk in Tyler Brûlé’s Winkorp empire are touting The Embassies, a “global, intergenerational hospitality concept that changes the way we perceive and experience getting older.” Sounds perfect to me: a string of properties around the world with residences, retail, communal spaces, and lots of likeminded people. Espresso, books, good food, long walks, great conversation, and evenings with room service, watching bad TV with the one you love? Sign me up until I check out.
I’d note here that it helps immeasurably to have a brother and brother-in-law who fuss over you and make all sorts of wonderful plans. I imagine what seems easy peasy to me is anything but. Love you guys.
A note about whatever this is …
After writing a few thousand articles for newspapers and magazines, I spent a long time trying a bunch of other stuff. I guess I figured what came (relatively) easily must by definition be less valuable, so I wandered in the corporate wilderness, becoming increasingly frustrated and doing work that felt increasingly lousy.
Sometimes with age comes wisdom, and I’ve realized finding something (relatively) easy ain’t a bad thing. So, this is a space where I’m resurrecting writing for myself, on topics weird and wild and wonderful.
Posts will appear when the mood takes me, but I do try to be consistently inconsistent—sometimes it’ll be a couple of days between drinks; sometimes a week. But if you subscribe, you’ll get a email letting you know I’m ranting. Again.