An old Chinese proverb says "自古美人如名將,不許人間見白頭“ -- "Throughout history, capable men and beautiful women have a common worry: getting old!" Certainly, one of the most frequently asked questions in human history is how to stay young and avoid getting old so quickly. Modern medical approaches may offer some help, but if we look carefully at people around us, it is not hard to generalize a few basic rules that could be more effective in keeping us look and feel younger. Here I will propose one such rule.
The aging process seems to accompany us as we get older each day. A couple of observations may help correlate the likely processes that cause us to age fast. Let me begin with an observation which is universal across different cultures, races and epochs: "aging" seems to come with a condition of our mind that as we grow older and naturally become "more intelligent", we have more things to worry about. You surely have more things to worry about now than what you used to have when you are 7 years old! I have seen people who aged very rapidly as they became apparently more successful and at the same time had lots of things to worry about.
To make the connection, we need to understand what makes us worry. As we grow older each day, our ability to understand the world, the things and people around us, apparently gets "better". But this ability has an essential component of being able to see the down side of the things that happen to us so that we can react appropriately and prevent damage. This is supposed to be a useful "skill" that humans develop over years of evolution.
The basic conjecture of my aging theory is that people age because of their practice of negative thinking, for reasons of protecting themselves, preventing potential damages, optimizing their survival chance, etc. Thus, aging is inevitable! But the problem is that we tend to overdo it!
Observing people that I know in recent years leads to the following conclusion: those who have a natural tendency to focus on the negative side of everything that happens to them, and mostly unnecessarily, age much faster. I can therefore infer that the tendency of our mind to see things negatively is what causes us to worry and hence makes us age faster!
So, the key to staying young is to take a positive approach in dealing with all aspects of our life: the way we look at things around us, the way we treat other people, the way we see how other people treat us, etc., and that positive thinking would make us worry less, and surely would keep us young! When you have finished half of your box of chocolates, just think that you still have a whole half to enjoy! Every cloud has its silver lining, and it is just a matter of whether you would like to see it positively.
The process of aging would slow down significantly if we can master the skill of thinking positively.
A concluding question: Is it really true that more worries are consequence of being smarter or more intelligent? Or is it true that seeing things negatively is an attribute of intelligence? I have met many smart people who look young and do not seem to have much to worry about! I have also met very successful people who tackle problems with positive thinking. Perhaps we may conjecture that it is a matter of how we look at things and people around us and how we orient our position and direction of attack when we analyze a problem, and this is making the key distinction between a happy mind and a worrying one. Then, the rate of aging is really just a matter of choice.
August 2009
