Since I am a 93 year old who has no health problems and enjoys life, I am frequently asked the same question in many different ways, all of which boil down to the same thing, "How did you do it?" That's not an easy question to answer but I'll give it a try.

I believe that authorities on the subject of longevity think that the inheritance of genes from ancestors with long-life histories is the major factor that determines one longevity and I assume they are right. However, if this is true I have defied the odds. My mother died at age 49 and my father at age 62. I am next to the youngest of seven children. My 95-year-old sister and I are the only ones still living. My other five siblings died in their early 70s. All my grandparents and great grandparents died in their early 70s or younger with the exception of my maternal grandmother and her father, my great grandfather, both of whom lived to be 91. Since it is likely that my long life and good health did not come from inherited genes, my answer to the question, "How did you do it,?" becomes quite relevant. With the inheritance factor removed from the picture, it becomes more plausible to think that "what I did" might be the major factor. Some of "what I did" follows:

I'll begin with the basic fact that it is hard to enjoy life and be happy at any age without good mental and/or physical health. I have always believed, and most everyone agrees, that a good diet and regular exercise are good-health essentials.

When I retired at the age of 60 after a long career in the insurance business, I knew I could not enjoy my old age, which I was determined to do, without good mental and physical health. I also knew I could never be happy at any point in my old age without being totally involved in challenging mental and physical activities that I enjoyed. I decided to select the one mental and the one physical activity that I enjoyed most, set goals for myself in each and go for them full blast.

As a mental activity, I selected writing, as it was something I had always enjoyed so I decided to polish my writing skills and become an author with the publication of one or more books as my long-term goal. I began by the frequent exchange of letters with a growing number of interesting and articulate friends and relatives, attempting to make each of my letters as interesting and/or humorous as I possibly could. It's a pastime and challenge that I still enjoy to this day. This pastime expanded with the advent of of the computer age when e-mail became the preferred and easiest method of corresponding. At the present time, my e-mail address book contains the names of 123 friends and relatives with whom I exchange letters. For me, this was and still is a most enjoyable pastime and at the same time I honed my writing skills to the point that I authored and published two books in the past ten years, with the second one being published last month.

The one physical activity I enjoyed most was working out at the gym and my first goal was to become more physically fit than any of my competitors. It took me close to 20 years to achieve that goal and then I became interested in the sport of track and began my running career. In the year 2000 at the age of 86 I began competing in the Senior Olympics, won the state championship in the Georgia Golden Olympics in a track event, the 100-meter sprint, and set as my new goal a national championship. It took me five years and lots of hard work to achieve that goal but I did it and then some in the 2005 National Senior Olympics in Pittsburgh, Pa., where I won gold medals in both the 100 and 400-meter races and broke the national records in both. At that time, my new goal became the breaking of one or more world records.

I had planned to break a word record in June of this year at the National Senior Olympic Games in Louisville, Ky., but I didn't. Nevertheless, I am very proud of what I did accomplish. I won three gold medals (the 200, 400 and 800-meter races) and a silver in the 100-meter race and broke the national records in the 200 and 800 meter races. The world records can wait until the next National Senior Olympic Games in San Francisco in 2009, at which time I plan to be well prepared to beak at least one of those elusive world records.

From my present lofty vantage point atop 93 years of healthy, happy living, it is my observation that upon retirement very few people take the time to think about and plan for a healthy, happy and rewarding old age. Instead, many of them sit down with no plan for the rest of their life and accept with little resistance the inevitable adversities that come their way. What a waste!

EMAIL PRINT

posted at 12:05:29 PM | comments (1)