The Key to a Longer Life

What good is a long life if it feels short.

We all operate under the assumption that good diet and exercise are going help us live a long life. This is wrong. I mean, it is right, but it is wrong.

The reason for good diet and exercise is for quality of life, primarily. The length of time doesn't matter if it feels like a blink.

And what makes life feel like a blink? Constant motion.

Kwai Chang Caine walking on rice paper. 

It is no mystery to me, anymore, as to why time seems to go faster as we get older: we don't ever sit around and do nothing, after the age of, say, fifteen. In fact, if we do, we are perceived as lazy. Kids, on the other hand, spend a lot of time just "being."

Fill up your time with action, thought and tasks, and it will "fly." Think of the slow day at work with no customers. It is truly a slow day.

Today, I had off from school. I came downstairs and it was just me and the dog. I left the TV off and I didn't put on any music. I sat and had a nice breakfast with a good cup of coffee and I listened to the October rain.

After this, I sat on the couch with the dog, by the opened window. At one point, I looked at the clock: 10:45. Quite a while later, I looked back and it was 10:48. It went slowly, but pleasantly.

If we can string days together days with just this kind of solitude and stillness in them, maybe our life will be a little longer, whether we die at 55 or 95.

Seeking solitude and silence is not new advice, but it is still necessary advice, I think.