The Cracked Acorn: Growing Old

Our days may come to seventy years or eighty if our strength endures, yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away. – Psalm 90:10

We all want to live as long as possible.  The Scripture promises three score and ten, 70 years old, but might be longer.  So far, as birth certificates have recorded persons who have lived longer, we can consider the following:

“Only one person has ever been verified to live to be over 120 years old. Jeanette Calment from France died on the 4th of August of 1997, living to be 122 years and 164 days. At the time of her death, she was also the only one in the world who had met Vincent Van Gogh in person. That means everyone at her birth had died before she did. Scary thought, isn’t it?

At 90 with no heirs, she signed a contingency contract with her 47-year-old apartment lawyer, saying he would pay a monthly fee of 2500 francs until she died. He probably didn’t expect Calment would live another 32 years. He ended up paying Calment the equivalent of 180.000€, double the apartment’s value. When he later died aged 77, his widow continued the payments until Calment’s death.” (Wikipedia)

The life expediency in the USA is now 79.8 years.  If you expect to join the Club of Centenarians, I would suggest that you avoid stress.  Research of the above person notes that she led a simple life without stress.  Also, she did not have any chronic health problems and lived in a time that did not have the serious viruses that we are experiencing now.

Although it does not hurt not to clean your plate as I was told to do when I grew up on the farm, there were three big meals about every day.  No one went to the doctor unless it was a threatening accident.  When someone died, many would say it was cancer, which is still with us.

Some believe that in the future, all diseases and such will be conquered.  When the baseball legend Ted  Williams passed on, his head was sealed in a cryonics chamber to wait for the day he would be thawed and cured and get a new body.

Meanwhile, those of us left behind are trying to eat healthily and avoid too much sunshine and drive a very large vehicle to avoid dying in a crash with another; we hope with a small car. With all this, don’t forget to have lots of insurance for health checks and unexpected air transport to the best hospitals (when all else fails!)

Mercedes years ago advertised that every engine was run full throttle for 30 minutes; I don’t see that anymore.  I am sure the company found out it caused lots of stress on the moving parts.

An employee that I worked with was going to drive her teens to school; she went and warmed up the car, blew the horn, and raced the engine to get the children’s attention and come to the car; you guessed it, all this blowing the horn and racing the engine broke the timing belt.  So, on a human, it works the same way… eventually, something will happen to the heart or just in general to one’s body; to live a long life and eliminate stress is at the top of the list.