Many of our parents lived on two-martini lunches, two packs of cigarettes a day, zero planned exercise—and were more or less happy with their lives. So what’s the problem with that? Someone asked me this last night at the Super Age x Canyon Ranch Longevity8 program. My answer: If someone wants to live that way, go for it. But it’s not for me. I want more options in life.
My parents were pretty much done by 60. They no longer had the physical capacity for long hikes. They felt their mortality acutely—which isn’t inherently bad—but it limited what they could imagine for their futures. Their world shrank.
They also didn’t have the information we have now. Their relationships with doctors lacked collaboration; physicians issued top-down directives. The annual physical was a pass/fail test, not a conversation about improving healthspan. Their sense of what was possible was narrower than ours. Accepting that life has an endpoint can be motivating, and that hasn’t changed. What has changed is our belief that we have real agency over how we live between now and then. That single shift is enormous.
Some people hear this and assume it means tipping into metric mania, as if longevity were the goal itself. What a small, shallow view. The point of extending life is to create more runway for more human experiences. More of those moments, over more years, build a richer life—one filled with options and the possibility of radical aliveness.
I want to stay healthy, vibrant, and wildly alive until I die. To do that, I have to act. I have to keep myself in the best health I can. I have to stay brave enough to move toward the person I’m meant to be. That takes informed effort. It doesn’t happen just because I want it to. Becoming the best version of myself takes time. I’m a slow learner. And I want as much time as I can reasonably get to grow into that person.
Onward and upward,
David Stewart
