Surprisingly, I sleep about eight-and-a-half hours a night when I am in our apartment in NYC, and some nights it is more like nine-and-a-half. My sleep here is oddly better than when I am in the peaceful mountains of Utah. Maybe it has something to do with walking a lot, maybe being highly stimulated during the day, or because there is a gym in the building and I am having my daily workouts. I suspect, however, that at least some of my impressive sleep proficiency has to do with the building itself. It is not advertised as a “wellness building,” but with an infrared sauna, cold plunge, solarium, lots of gardens, bowling alley, and a ton of communal space, that is essentially what it is. Similar to many people, I have often thought that I could, by force of will, control the extent to which an environment influences me. Wrong. Studies say our brains are constantly responding to our environments, good and bad. Since we will spend an average of 59 years of our lives indoors, we can’t help but be influenced by the rooms around us.
This week was the Global Wellness Real Estate Symposium which, in the last few years, has changed. It used to be the intersection of wellness and housing singularly aimed at the mega-rich, meaning only if one had oodles of cash was wellbeing on the menu. It is still the case that there are plenty of high-end developments focused on the wellness of the inhabitants. What has changed is the increasing democratization of wellbeing. There are now subsidized housing projects throughout the US focused on keeping people mentally and physically well; although these are still notable exceptions, they were non-existent 5 years ago. Even cities themselves have become attuned to human needs taking priority over the needs of cars — think NYC and Paris. It’s not just big cities either; there are developments in conservative areas such as Texas focused on community-building with new meandering nature-based walkable streets. If loneliness is an epidemic whose damage is on par with smoking, let’s keep community-building in mind when we design new housing.
This seems to be part of the overall understanding that we have some agency over our physical and mental wellbeing. Part of this may be the increasing velocity at which our world is changing, bringing on our desire to get a grip on whatever we can — we may not be able to control any of the huge happenings out in the world, but if we can feel a sense of control of our own health, it can be comforting. Of course, wellness is in the eye of the beholder. For some, it may mean safe drinking water; for some, it could mean the latest tech; for almost all of us, it means a sense of belonging. As I watch how influential Bryan Johnson has become, the fundamental lesson he gives is that we can have some amount of control over our health. This is the singular factor that has changed in the last 40 years: an understanding that we are not powerless; that what we do and how we live really does make a difference. The combination of globally fewer children being born, more people living longer, and the promises of bio-tech advancements all seem to point to more and more attention aimed at wellbeing. Some of this will be kooky hype but, with time, we will filter what actually works. I can’t tell you exactly why I rest so deeply in the city that never sleeps, but something here is working.
Onward and upward,
David
