This article was written in April 1997 for the San Antonio Medical Gazette. Ten years later it appears to have even greater relevance.
We are in an age and a place where routinely living to be a hundred, and staying healthy while doing it, is both a possibility and a goal for many of us. Each day comes with more advice, more products, more information. The science is exciting.
The view of normal aging as an accumulation of subclinical diseases rather than some irrevocable progressive frailty has produced an organ by organ and system by system evaluation of our bodies and a national fascination with hormones and free radical eliminators.
The human genome will be fully described, probably within three to five years, and with this description will come tens of thousands of obviously vital, and quite mysterious, proteins. As the function of each is delineated, the possibility of conquering apoptosis, the genetic based mechanism that times cell death and determines natural life span, may confront us.
The drugs and devices to increase specific gene output have already been named—the amplitrons—and a high-stakes race is on to find them. The immunophilins may arrive even sooner: medications that hold promise for reversing peripheral and central nerve degeneration. Is the cure for Parkinsons’s Disease just the other side of the year 2000?
When I was asked to write a guest column for the San Antonio Medical Gazette, I thought of my, and our, fixation on cheating time. What about a piece entitled “How to live to be a hundred”? It would be fun to do. Look at the facts and fads of today, revisit all that practical advice our great aunts gave us, and come up with a list of twenty do’s and don’ts. Maybe some readers would get interested, and we could start an exchange on what looked interesting and what looked silly.
So I put the list together, and then hit a roadblock. A Gazette editor told me that many of her friends were exercise-longevity buffs, but nobody knew why. And so I found myself asking “why live to be 100?” and realized that until I knew more about that question I did not want to write the article.
The trouble is that for most of us living to be 100 seems to be an end unto itself. Eat just right, exercise precisely, take those eight pills every morning, stay lucky, and get ready to pick from the tree of science.
But why? I am 56 and, except for the consequences of weekend athleticism, am pretty healthy. I do a number of things on my list of twenty, but have a nagging problem. In the last few years this problem has become an intermittent and bothersome discomfort.
What comes to mind is a sentence by W. B. Yeats I wish I had never read but, having done so, keep thinking about:
The years like great black oxen tread the world,
And God, the herdsman goads them on behind,
And I am broken by their passing feet.
(from The Countess Cathleen, a play)
I think we all at times feel this: that no matter what we do we face a dismal downward slide. Forces far beyond us run our lives, and these forces are generally malevolent. We might dispel this dark mood with a host of reasons for living on, but the thought is a lurker: Black oxen on the sideline. So the heck with this article.
Then I met Joe.
Joe is a friend from a long time ago. The occasion was the 35th reunion of the Davidson College Class of 1962. About 50 showed up, Joe Martin among us. Joe was a bit too short and slow for intercollegiate sports, but he loved the games and the spirit. He was our cheerleader.
I remember a smart, enthusiastic, chin-up sort of guy, and I learned later he had gone on to a successful banking career. Ten years ago, at our 25th, Joe, probably like me, was an older version of his college self.
This year he showed up in a wheelchair. Joe has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He can stand only with the help of a walker, and he has to strain a bit to say the words right.
Two months ago Joe started Race Day in Charlotte, North Carolina. It is simple. Every Thursday, go to lunch with someone of a different ethnicity. Joe does it a couple of times a week. The day is catching on, and it is good for Charlotte.
In March the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners cut funding for the arts. Joe saw this as wrong, as an angry and short-sighted response. He went to a session of the commissioners and spoke out, a wonderful speech (I got a copy). Nobody left. Everybody listened. A done deal turned into a continuing debate. I wish I had been there.
On Alumni Saturday, Joe got a chance to give my class some advice. Standing in his walker and struggling at times with enunciation, he told us we are an enterprising lot and, on the whole, very successful. We have lived by our wits, and a surprising number have also lived by our faith. Joe said it was not enough. Joe said you have to live by your heart.
On the way home I realized Joe had done it. Most of us know what is right and know a hundred little important reasons not to do it just now. Joe has obliterated the distinction. In the grasp of—uided by?—his illness, for Joe thinking the right thing and doing the right thing have become the same. He is living by his heart. There is no Black Ox stepping on Joe.
So, should you live to be 100, healthy and sound to the end? I think so, if in that time you follow Joe’s advice, if you can use your years to finally live by the heart, if you can really become alive. Otherwise, forget it.
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