So far, there seems to be only one way to live a longer life and it is quite simple really. All you have to do is get a day older than you were yesterday. I highly recommend taking this process just one year at a time, sometimes even just one day at a time. You don’t want to overwhelm yourself as it is quite a jarring experience. By taking it one step at a time, you’re allowing yourself the chance to deal with the changes and adjustments at a reasonable pace that will not accidentally speed up the process. Speeding up the process can actually cut time off so keep that in mind and try to stress less about it.
You do have to ask yourself one important question though before you begin.
“Can I afford it?”
The important thing to remember here is this, as you start to achieve your goal of living a longer life, your payments and losses grow quite substantially. So if you are reading this while still young, hear me now. You need to start saving right now, and not just financially. You need to save your organs, your skin, your bones, and your mind. By saving I mean sparing them from trauma. No, you are not invincible. Trust me! I have been where you are now and it took me too long to accept that I am, in fact, not self-healing. I am actually pretty fragile. No, it will not be “fine”. It absofuckinglutely is not fine and it absofuckinglutely will come back to bite you on the ass and you will look back and think, “What kind of moronic idiot was I to think I could let my body go through all that abuse without any consequences?” And that’s the kicker right there. Consequences. Everything in life has consequences. And the worst part is, the older you start trying to live a longer life, the harder it is because of all the consequences of your youth that get paraded in front of you like some kind of sadistic fashion show.
For example, old injuries which you thought had healed, have in fact, not. They are merely dormant, waiting for their time to prance down the catwalk. That knee you busted while skateboarding, your back that you hurt falling out of a tree that you told your friends you could climb after 6 beers, your little toe that you broke walking into a chair that was in your way when you did the Bird Box Challenge; they all come back and they taunt you, like mosquitoes buzzing in your ear while you try to sleep. You can try swatting them away but all you’re really going to do is end up slapping yourself in the face. Tide pod kids, I don’t even wanna know what’s waiting for your digestive system when you hit the big 4-0!
So how do you live a longer life? Well, you just do. Every day that you are alive, you are one day older than the previous day, so congratulations! You’re doing it! You have achieved something you hadn’t yet achieved until right now so be proud of yourself, I’m proud of you!
While it’s great to live a longer life, you have to also accept that as you age, things break down, they droop, your body will change and there’s not much we can do about that. There are many money-hungry corporations out there employing scientists to try to work out the magic formula which will allow humans to live longer lives while slowing down the decay process, but as of today, right now, we can’t do that yet. That is why it is important to keep reminding yourself of the consequences of today, which will be waiting for you tomorrow.
So my advice to the young is this, take it one day at a time, enjoy your life as much as you can without eating washing powder or driving a car blindfolded. Keep in mind that what you do today, you pay for tomorrow, but also, what you do today, you get to remember and enjoy tomorrow and every day after that.