I am 30 and a Baby
How to look at life when we can live till 100 years old.
I have recently changed my career, ditched a toxic boyfriend, and moved from London to the seaside.
It depends if you have met anyone who has jumped ship like this before, quite a lot of fancy, successful friends from my former life were shocked.
They asked me why I made such drastic decisions when I’m 30. Implying that it’s the age to settle down, or that I have a middle-life crisis.
I usually just laughed and muddled through my answer but fine, I will answer all your questions here now. I will tell you what I think about age, lifestyle, and career in this day and age, given it’s a much longer journey.
A century-long.
We Will Live Till 100
I was a smoker and a big drinker, but also a keen swimmer and hiker, so frankly I didn’t know if I was healthy or not. Many people I spoke to also don’t think they will live for a century-worth of life.
Science and statistics have shown that we are very likely to live that long.
So I did a blood test, and guess what, I’m bloody healthy. Even my lungs and kidney are all clear. I guess I did consume cigarettes and alcohol in moderation (it would be even better if I don’t smoke at all obviously).
Given it seems more likely than not that we will live to 100 years old, around the age of 27 I started to become very interested in gerontology — the study of aging.
The question is are we living healthily, or surviving barely.
Long-term Healthy Life
According to Japanese Keio University (free online course here), there are three things we need to consider for living a long-term healthy life:
- Healthy diet
- Exercise
- Social interaction
The first two are not hard to understand. Unless we have life-threatening diseases, we might not die until much later. This means that we want to live healthily, rather than suffering from chronic illnesses for a lengthened period of time. That’s seriously tough.
On the notion of physical health, this episode of Zac Efron’s Down to Earth is actually quite helpful. I wouldn’t turn to Americans when it comes to health information (sorry), but they were interviewing people from Sardinia — one of the 9 blue zones in the world for healthy aging.
This last one, social interaction, is what I research — we can’t live a healthy life isolated and lonely. I think deeply about what will happen when a person is suffering badly with their mental health issues, in order words, what exactly happens when a person stuck in the space between deep suffering and suicide?
It’s a place no one deserves to go there, no therapy will be able to help, but only through meaningful connection and social participation will we have a chance to thrive again.
This is Why Life is a Game And Earth a Playground
To live a life of hedonism and extremism (i.e. the outdated work hard play hard mode) is to put our longevity into jeopardy, as well as our planet. This is evident by how badly the Earth is currently screwed up by mankind. This is the opposite of seeing life as a game.
It’s hard to reverse a life that’s been damaged, physically and mentally. Take Wolf of the Wall Street, that kind of overwork, overdose, and over-the-top lifestyle is just going to take a toll eventually. We have seen too many people go to extremes and lost control, why are people still opt for the short-sighted adrenaline rush from playing with fire?
If you really love adrenaline, try paragliding. Not chronic overtime working and silly client entertainment. That world, oh my god, is not a playground but a devil’s trap.
If life is a game and the Earth is a playground — I’d much prefer it to be dreamy, passionate, and compassionate. I have tried to explain the hedonistic world as a world dominated by masculine energy in this article before, and what we need to do, is to induce some feminine energy back to balance. Alpha's lifestyle is so out of order.
How To Live With a 100-Year Model
I am 31 years old now, less than one-third of my hundred-year life has passed. I have achieved things here and there, but technically I’m only just getting into my second trimester of a 100-year life.
Helpful life-planning advice and study for a Centurian lifestyle can be found in the book The 100-Year Life, written by London Business School scholars. I’m going to tell you how I’m preparing as a person 30 years into this long life (honestly I don’t want to live that long, but that’s for another time):
- Work-life balance: as mentioned above, unless you are keen to die like Heath Ledger, Jackson Pollock or other self-destructive people, we must embrace moderation in life to get to 100 years old without major life hazards. However, that doesn’t mean we live a safe and boring life, see the next point.
- Take calculated risks: The biggest difference between extremist self-destruction and taking calculated risks like changing a career at 30-year-old is that the motivation should always be positive and well thought-through. Someone who tried to live in a van then gave up has helpfully said this (paraphrased): “Van life is a wonderful lifestyle, but if you carry your pain to the van and expect a change in lifestyle can change your wounded life, the pain is not going to go away.” Don’t live dangerously, live clearly.
- Be child-like: the most authentic presentation of living clearly is usually witnessed from children. This is akin to the Zen Buddhist concept of Beginner’s Mind. Extreme capitalist (and masculine) society tempts us with one after another exciting thing, but a truly mature person that sees what makes one happy with being content very easily, like a child.
- Cultivate meaningful connections: It’s good to eat well and do exercise, but if we can have someone to do these healthy things with, not only it will make us more likely to persevere but it is likely to augment the impact of our lifestyle. I was being polite in other articles (included at the end of this article), but I will be honest here: ditch those toxic friends, they don’t deserve our time.
Last Thoughts
I’m 30 and I’m a baby (ok, more like a teenager). I still have around 70 years to go. Even if I might die before 100 years old, there’s even more reason I don’t want to look back at my life and think that I have lived a life that’s completely off-balanced and chasing something that’s perhaps, unimportant, in the first place.
Because I’m so young, I know I can shape my life now. In fact, even if you are 60, there are still 20–40 years to go, I don’t know on what basis we can justify doing nothing and produce greenhouse gases relentlessly.
Experience the new life with meaningful connections, a child-like mind, and a balanced work-life schedule. Then the goal will be clear and not affected by others.
Where are you at in a 100-year life? It’s probably not too late to re-evaluate and live a long-term healthy life.
More from me:
