Will You Get Out of This Alive?
On Outliers, Outliars and Outlivers: What we can learn about living long, living well and living out loud from the Pandemic
If you get through this first phase of our Conditions, are you even going to live very long?
And if you do, what kind of life might that be?
The answer to the title question is No. You won’t get out of life alive. None of us does. And thank heaven. You think we have sewage problems now. Just think if we all lived forever. Holy shit indeed.
However, the next question is how much life can you possibly get out of the life you do have, however much time you are given?
Yesterday I read the following perfectly-timed piece out of Elemental by Markham Heid:
With thanks to Mark, he just saved me a lot of research. I’m going to draw in part from this piece, which underscores the points I hope to share about living, living well, and living out loud. Before I do, let’s define the terms:
Outlier:
a person or thing differing from all other members of a particular group or set.
Outliar:
No, not the North Carolina thrash band. I didn’t know there was one. I thought I had originated the term. Well yes, I did, sort of. At least for my purposes. It originated in my dealings with Match.com, and has expanded. I describe an Outliar as someone who flings out-sized dishonesty at the unsuspecting, most particularly as it relates to resumes and dating, and pretty much all so-called Influencers. Veritable firehoses of bullshit, if you will, by my measure, most of them. Posers, pretenders, and in most cases not at all practitioners of what they preach. My opinion only.
Outliver:
a person who outlives or survives. Any luck, that’s gonna be you and me, kiddo.
Let’s wade in here.
You might have noticed that there is a new term being floated around which speaks to an abject fear of aging: Gerascophobia. If you’re over fifty you might find that mockable. Please don’t. Every generation has its boogeyman. The one for the aught-twenties if you will, is aging. Because I write about this a lot and because I practice what I preach, the topic is of supreme importance to me. Two reasons: older people, almost invariably older women, often fire me nasty darts about my articles, and younger people write articles about the terrors of turning thirty. Both trouble me greatly.
Most accuse me of scolding or barking at them about what they must do, that they have to be thin, or super geezers, or whatever. Not only have I never said such a thing, nor have I even hinted at it, it speaks to a much larger underlying sickness. A sickness that has been foisted upon our society by people who have a great deal to gain by our fear of aging.
First, there is no fix to aging. Everything that ever lived is dead, everything now alive is going to die. As George Carlin once argued, where’s the “sanctity of life” in that, especially when we make habit or sport out of killing, especially each other?
There is, however, a fix to aging badly, or dying young, or living badly. You and I don’t have to end up elderly at any age. That’s a mindset. And as such, well within our reach to manage.
The rest, while in part affected by genetics, chance and other variables, is about 70% in our hands.
Kindly, let’s please start with our basics.
If you’re having a rough time in quarantine, it might well be because you are missing one or more of four essential life pillars.
- Have a life purpose.
- Eat well for your body, activity level and your particular unique body physiology.
- Have a solid support system (friends, family, faith)
- Move move move move move move move. Something designed for you, something you enjoy, that you will do, because it makes you feel good, and it’s fun.
This essential recipe for life balance applies to all of us at any age, not just those limping past forty, shall we say.
It’s pretty easy to spot which pillars people are missing. Articles about eating disorders or loneliness or lacking focus abound.
Or we realize that we’re a bit short on friends, or faith.
Or we have finally come to the realization that perhaps it really is time to give that body a little work once in a while. Or some combination.
That’s terrific feedback. Like a new set of New Year’s Resolutions.
Those resolutions, to find balance across all four pillars, are important if we want to live long, and kindly, also live well. The best revenge for being born into a restless world.
The more you obsess about your weight, your looks, your outside skin, the more other parts suffer.You chase friends away, you become deeply depressed, you don’t take care of yourself. Ultimately you may find yourself thin, but so terrified of three ounces of salted peanuts that you are just piss-poor company.
Been there, have the T-shirt. These kinds of useless anxieties are how we age ourselves swiftly. Very swiftly. Gerascophobia will do more to hasten an early death than many other factors, for fear and anxiety cause really destructive behaviors. Stay with me here.
There is a conceit that is widely shared, and in every way pushed by our collective corporate Outliars: That we can get old without aging. Billions are made on this lie. Please just Google the ridiculous term anti-aging. The awful sucking sound you hear is our treasure being Hoovered out of our wallets while we chase that particular un-catchable chimera.
What I write about with great passion is what I practice. If I don’t do it I won’t write it. It’s an integrity issue. People can validate any claim I make. I’ve got photographic proof, articles, and records.
If you don’t live that advice, folks, kindly don’t give it.
I write strictly from personal experience. Otherwise I shut the fuck up. I might kindly offer the same to those writers who pass along ageist nonsense as truth. Might be for you. Not for a lot of us who don’t drink the corporate ageist marketing nonsense.
Here is what I practice:
- Demand excellent health and work hard for it. That takes discipline, focus and a joy in moving and eating well.
- Demand that I keep erasing my boundaries. Never slow down. Never buy into the lies about aging, infirmity and decrepitude. Own my shit, and take complete responsibility for my development, the messes I make and the results of my actions.
- Surround myself with unbelievable people. In the last two years quite a few have shown up in my life, because I made room for them, and boy did they walk in the front door bearing gifts. Many I met right here on Medium, as I have mentioned elsewhere.
- I constantly look for and find what’s funny. This is my super power, my buoyancy compensator, the You-Cannot-Keep-Me-Down Wonder Woman potion. That’s what makes me resilient. Nothing heals me faster than the endorphins that ride high on my coursing blood. I have an army of absolute awesome absurdity. That is my Fountain of Youth.
Here’s a perfect example. Yesterday I spent the entire day- some seven hours- moving the better part of about 3000+ cubic feet of household goods from a downstairs, outside storage room to my upstairs living room where it’s going into a pod in a few hours. Many of those boxes are 40–50 lbs apiece. Many are quite large and had to be stacked over my head. I did it solo. I am about to get back to it as soon as I finish this article.
At one point I cranked the holy shit out of my left ankle while carrying a heavy, unwieldy box through the basement door. I sat down, laughed, cursed, got up and kept right on moving. The ankle pain resolved itself. Nothing. Works. Like. Laughter.
There’s no magic or secret sauce that keeps older people vibrant. The same rules that work for those of us who are past fifty (or forty or thirty or twenty) work for you in your teens, and twenties. I get the same injuries that an athlete gets at twenty or thirty, the only difference is that I’ve got more of them.
I don’t get injuries because I’m old. I get them because I’m active.
If you wish to age well, you understand how the body, how your body works. How your mind and heart affect your body.
Here are some examples of rank ageism among my fellow Medium peeps (all are women past fifty).
Getting up is harder than getting down when you’re my advanced age and non-willowy body type.
Yep. You’re going to have one hell of a time getting up from the floor if you don’t bother to exercise. Period. True at any age, worse after sarcopenia sets in. A condition which is vastly slowed down by exercise and proper nutrition.
Another, a writer whose work I typically respect, wrote this:
No matter how well you eat, how many miles you can run, or how much weight you can lift, the lungs of a 60-year-old are not the lungs of a 30-year-old.
Yep. AND a 75-year-old can have the lungs of a forty-year-old and the muscles of a 25-year-old. No luck about it at all. Just steady exercise, daily, for a good long time. Please see:
We do people a disservice when we make monumentally false pronunciations. Especially when just a few clicks on Google would have offered a completely different viewpoint, based on solid research.
However, most of us don’t research to make ourselves wrong. Most of the time we seek validation of what we already think, the nature of our realities, and support our POV. It takes courage to admit that what we believe might be utter balderdash.
Well, people over fifty just slow down. BULLSHIT. Not those in my world. If that’s your reality I suggest you change whom you hang out with.
Rosennab, who is a marathoner and fourth-degree black belt in Taekwondo at 57, most certainly doesn’t have the slightest bit of trouble getting up off the floor. Nor does my buddy Ann Litts, sixty, who is a yogi. My Thai masseuse buddy, Melissa A. Chaffin, is 63, not the least bit willowy, and even with sore knees, she most certainly can easily get up off the floor.
There are many, many, many men and women here in Colorado and on Medium who have written me or passed me at speed, all of whom don’t have this problem. Every color, size, culture, gender. We’re all older. But we aren’t elderly.
Elderly is a mindset.
This isn’t a beat down. What it is, is a combination of call-out and invitation to challenge the lies.
First, that age itself alone delivers decrepitude. LIE.
Second, that you have to be willowy to be mobile. LIE.
That in any way, you must be thin to be fit. LIE. BIG huge fat awful LIE.
You and I have to make a long series of rather poor choices to reach the age of sixty and discuss your creeping decrepitude, loss of mental acuity, and all the other monumentally wrong claims that I read here on Medium that people claim are solely due to the aging process.
You will age. Your body will start to deteriorate. How fast is largely up to us.
Osteoporosis isn’t inevitable for thin Caucasian and Asian women. Please see:
I had pretty bad osteoporosis fifteen years ago. Now I don’t. I increased my natural calcium intake and changed my workout routines. These things work. Not magic. Science.
If you feed yourself badly your body will rebel. Please see:
This line: “The Western diet appears to be mistakenly recognized by the immune system as a threat to the organism” says it all.
One Medium writer also wrote this about an upcoming 60th birthday:
… the potential for advancing mental decrepitude accompanying (her 60th birthday).
Let’s look at what almost guarantees mental decrepitude (at any age for that matter):
- Diabetes
- Smoking
- High blood pressure
- Elevated cholesterol
- Obesity
- Depression
- Lack of physical exercise
- Low education level
- Infrequent participation in mentally or socially stimulating activities
So kindly. Age doesn’t deliver mental decrepitude. Bad habits do.
Starting to forget stuff? That’s not necessarily age or Alzheimer’s. See this:
Every single thing you put in your body has an effect. When you take responsibility for everything you ingest, chances are your health and cognitive process will vastly improve. Not only that:
Attitude about aging has far more to do with what’s ailing us than age itself.
A brand new Medium friend Kira Dawn, 39, wrote me:
God had given me so many gifts. One being to accept me exactly as I am. I don’t do Botox like my mom(sorry mom). I don’t want liposuction. I’m getting a little chunky and I’m Embracing it. Life is short. A well lived life is going to show and your happiness and ability to laugh at yourself changes your appearance. I love myself. I laugh at myself. And I refuse to get cosmetic work done. It will be what it’s going to be. Instead of being miserable, let’s embrace ourselves and our bodies.
…I love all my fucking idiosyncrasies.
For my money, Kira is well on her way. However you and I manage to get where we need to be is up to us. However, I would argue strenuously that you will never get where you can be your best if you buy into the societal bullshit about aging. If you ingest bad food, take bad meds, don’t work out, and turn into such a pile of whining complaints nobody wants to be around you, you will be an ancient at thirty.
Nobody says you have to be an elder athlete, an outlier or super geezer.
You can, however, rewrite your personal script. All the research backs me up:
Wanna be young forever? Look, we’re gonna die. But we can be incredibly youthful, vibrant, active, happy, engaged, athletic and powerful. Not if you succumb to bad habits, bad choices, and poor mental hygiene. But that’s just me.
Want to be an Outliver? You don’t have to be an Oulier. Just challenge the Outliars. Live on YOUR terms, not what is dictated by those who have everything to gain from your fear.
If you’ll pardon me, I have several thousand pounds of boxes to move after I have yogurt for breakfast.
