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May 8, 2005
Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing
You're probably wondering how I'm going to create a blog entry that somehow manages to quote both Stevie Wonder and Aubrey de Grey. Well, you're probably not wondering that at all, since 99% of you don't understand my pop music references. But for those of you who do, you're thinking: this is going to be a stretch.
Here's how it goes.
Lately I've been listening to a mix tape I made for myself when I first took the job that I just now went back to, after a rather unpleasant year of working in Vermont. It was like coming home from a very bad trip, or waking up from a horrible nightmare. The name of the mixtape was "Kansas" because I thought of my return as the end of the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy realizes that there's no place like home. I put that Stevie Wonder song on the tape, second to last song. Obviously I've been listening to the tape as of late because I've gone home to my job yet again, and it's so cheerful to blast Stevie Wonder loudly as I drive around to meetings and sit in traffic and such.
Yesterday as I was listening to it I thought about how writing a blog about CR on the Mprize website is a bit like saying, "Don't you worry 'bout a thing... except for this one thing!" The message of hope that we can actually reverse the damage caused by aging and restore our bodies and brains to youthful vigor is so exciting, so intoxicating, that it makes me want to run out and drink beer with Aubrey de Grey. Eat, drink and be merry... for tomorrow we'll fix it all.
And yet, I'm not convinced that if I run out and drink all the beer I want right now that I'll be in the shape I'll need to be in to take advantage of the real anti-aging biomedicine when it does become available. So I am putting quite a bit of energy in the here and now into CR.
It's a mixed message, really. Give money to the Mprize so that we can get scientists to focus on the real cure for aging... but in the meantime, cut your calories, get really skinny, eat your eggwhites and flax oil, pass up the free bagels at office functions, and I MEAN THIS use your nutritional software to make sure you're getting everything you need! Don't take chances, don't miss the escape velocity train by four minutes (I feel like I can really speak to this because after my girls' night out with VLC on Friday I managed to miss my train by four minutes and had to sit in the station for another hour.) and enjoy getting carded well into your thirties. As MR commented on the blog the other day: we're fighting for our lives. To do otherwise is to commit slow motion suicide. The stakes are very high, and it's sometimes hard to remember on a daily basis why it's so darned important that we stick to CR.
I feel torn all the time. I do all I can for the Mprize, but I worry that the fruits of our labors won't come in time to help those of us who aren't practicing CR. I look at my closest friends, and I feel sad imagining a future that they're not around to share. It is dramatically better now that I have MR and we can look forward to being skinny together indefinitely. I think we both feel conflicted when we talk with the people in our lives who don't do CR. On the one hand, we don't want to be pushy or annoying... it's everyone's own choice how they want to feed themselves. But if you really like someone, you don't want them to die any earlier than necessary! So it's a delicate balance. I wish I could tell my friends "Don't you worry 'bout a thing... we'll solve this little aging problem in plenty of time for you!" But when I see the people close to me flirting with a heart attack by eating high saturated fat, cholesterol filled diets, I can't pretend everything is okay.
For example, I have three good friends who are all 41 years old. Well, one just turned 42 but close enough. Two of them do not do CR, one does. One of them is Aubrey de Grey. He's really fun, and it's going to be a darned tragedy if he doesn't get to hang out with us for our extended lifespans. He doesn't believe that CR will get humans more than a year or two extra life, so he doesn't do it. However, I have discovered that he will eat whatever is put in front of him if someone else cooks it. So it seems like the obvious solution is for me and MR to adopt him and feed him our CR food. It would be like raising prize winning mice, except for the conversation would be a lot more exciting.
My second 41 ish year old friend is Brian Delaney, the president of the CR Society. He's been doing CR since the dawn of time, and though I've never quite understood why he eats cereal for breakfast, he looks so young that I feel certain the the CR thing is working. He's going to be around to hang out with us indefinitely, so whenever we disagree we try really hard to patch things up. It changes your perspective when you're planning to live a very long time... makes you want to resolve conflicts with other CR'd folk, since you can't count on them dropping dead any time soon.
My third friend who is 41 ish doesn't do CR, not because he doesn't believe in it, but because he just doesn't want to. He's in great shape and plays sports and has been in excellent health... doesn't smoke, drinks red wine, exercises all the time. He's very supportive of me doing CR, but has no interest in it himself. I've worked with this friend for zillions of years, and we frequently talk about our vision of a future in which there is more equality, more dignity for workers, a saner, more free, society. When I first took up CR, it was in large part so that I could live long enough to see such a time. It makes me sad to think that my long term friend and co-worker might not make it there with me.
Still, I try not to be a pest. Putting pressure on people never seems to work, so I try to set a good example and provide lots of tasty healthy food. Kidnapping is not a practical option, and you can't put your friends and colleagues in cages and raise them like mice.
At least I haven't figured out how. Yet.
Ever since I hung out with Aaron and Christine and Kevin and Aubrey in Alberta, I've thought that if we could just get enough of us together in the same place, the CR'd would cook and the non-CR'd would quickly become CR'd cause they wouldn't realize they were eating fewer calories. Our food is just so much more satisfying that it really feels like you're eating much more than you are. I never realized until I dramatically cut back on grains how very empty they are. Eat a bagel, you're hungry two hours later. Eat a megamuffin, and you're satisfied in body and soul for hours on end.
I don't have any good answers here... I have no magic formula for converting friends and family to CR. But if I come up with one, I'll let you know. In the meantime, keep cooking, keep engaging in public displays of extraordinary health (yes, I am glad it's almost bikini season!) and donate to the Mprize so that our non-CR'd friends might have a chance.
Posted by april at May 8, 2005 6:44 PM
Comments
I was just listening to that song full blast yesterday, so your headline naturally caught my attention!
Your entry is an inspiration for me to stick with my EOD IF AND to keep supporting the Mouse Prize!
Mark
Posted by: Mark Patterson at May 8, 2005 10:38 AM
I tell you one thing dudue. I am not amongst those 99% people who could not understand the pop music.
Posted by: Jeni at December 30, 2005 2:15 AM