A 117-Year-Old Woman Will Teach You to Be Young Again
Maybe humans made life too complicated.
I am a 34-year-old grandpa.
A 117-year-old Japanese woman is showing us up and making us look stupid.
She’s sipping Coca Cola while we’re eating smashed avocado and ruining our day with organic, vegan, no-sugar, no-life Kombucha.
Okay, I’m joking. But there’s a lot we can learn from centurions. My grandma lived until 104. She decided one day to stop eating because she was done with Earth. After that long, can you blame her? My nana is about to turn 100. She is as fit as a fiddle. She has no wifi and lives her version of a dream life.
Maybe humans made life too complicated. Maybe the trick is to dumb down your life like 100-year-olds do.
Kane Tanaka is the oldest living person in history, according to the Guinness Book of Records. That makes her badass. To put her age into perspective, Kane was alive when the Wright Brothers attempted air flight for the first time. That’s a hell of a long time. She has seen the complete transformation of society in her lifetime — from horse and cart, to electric self-driving musk cars without a cd player.
Here’s what a 117 year old can teach you.
Become a math nerd.
Math helps you live longer. Well, it’s not scientifically proven but it’s what Kane does. She spends her afternoon studying mathematics. It keeps her mind sharp. She believes you’re never too old to learn.
Throw your phone in the bin and buy a board game.
Kane plays a board game called Othello. She is known to beat the staff at her nursing home. I was in a board game shop the other day and was reminded of this habit by Kane.
The shop was full of board games I’d never heard of. The blurbs on the back of each game were like reading a choose your own adventure book from childhood. A board game helps you dare to be curious and creative again.
You get to feel the touch of printed paper and cardboard again. You get to be lost in a made-up world. You can even take a board game to a friend’s house and experience a different type of connection. When I was a kid I used to love making board games. Setting the rules of the game was fun.
I learned later as an adult that you can actually set the rules of your own life too. You don’t need to abide by society’s standards. You can just be yourself.
In a week’s time I’m taking a board game to a holiday celebration. There is one rule: no phones.
Phones ruin relationships. Board games enlarge your curiosity.
Wake up at 6 am and high-five a 117-year-old.
Kane wakes up early. You think she’d be tired after all these years. She’s not. She’s putting Tim Ferriss’ 4-hour workweek to shame. She is showing us that age is only a number and you can still live like a productivity nerd at 117.
Wake up early and get ahead of the day. Sleep in when the world enters a lockdown winter for a year.
You can overcome anything in life.
You think you got it bad?
Kane didn’t get to 117 with perfect health. She’s not a freak of nature with a perfect beating heart and a body full of red cordial blood that has never seen toxicity. Nope. Kane has had a rough life.
- At 35 she was infected with paratyphoid.
- At 45 she underwent pancreatic cancer surgery (the same cancer that killed tough guy rebel, Steve Jobs).
- At 76 she underwent gallstone removal surgery.
- At 90 she had cataract surgery.
- At 103 she was diagnosed with colorectal cancer and had surgery…again.
After all of that Kane survived. She still has an optimistic outlook on life and doesn’t take herself too seriously.
Go to war. Come back. Eat noodles.
Kane and her husband owned a small store selling udon noodles in the early days of their life together. From 1937 to 1939 her husband disappeared to fight in the war.
When he came home he went right back to the store to serve noodles with Kane. For many returned soldiers, they never went back to their pre-war lives. For Kane and her family, comebacks were a way of life. War, illness and death were guaranteed. All you could do was try to find some sense of normal and go on living for as long as you were gifted.
Maybe noodles are all you need to make a comeback.
How to live to 120 years old.
Kane’s goal is to live until 120. Her bulletproof strategy to get there is so simple it will make you cringe, as it reads like every self-improvement blog post ever written:
- Have hope.
- Get plenty of sleep.
- Let family lift your spirits up and give you a reason to live.
Kane is following the steps of Jeanne Calment who lived to 122 years old. Jeanne was born in 1875 and died in 1997. There are stories of her selling colored pencils to Van Gogh and watching the Eiffel Tower be built.
Jeanne, too, was an odd one. She smoked up until the age of 117. She didn’t use heating in the winter. After a nice meal she’d smoke a cigarette and drink a small amount of port wine. She lived as if she was a lot younger than she was.
Jeanne said World War 2 had little effect on her life. German soldiers used her bedrooms to sleep in, but they “did not take anything away.”
The secret to being young again is your attitude about life. Stress ages you when you take every little thing so seriously.
Feeling older is bad for you.
In 2016 The American Psychological Association did a study on feeling older.
“Feeling older is associated with poorer physical and mental health, but also with physiological impairments that may result in illness and health service use over time.”
It may explain why Kane acts as if she is half her age and doesn’t see age as anything significant. Maybe you can relate. Maybe you are acting older than you are and it’s having a negative effect on your life.
The best time in life, according to a 117-year-old?
In 2019 Kane was asked what the happiest moment in her life had been. Her answer?
Now.
Yep, after 117 years of life she only lives for right now. Not for the past. Not for some future she may never get to live.
Young people are the ones who live for right now — and you can be any age to live like a young person. The past and future make you feel old.
The future won’t make you happy. The best time of your life is now.
