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May 19, 2005
If You Choose Not To Decide You Still Have Made a Choice
You know that old saying, a favorite of followers of Chomsky, that goes, "You can't be neutral on a moving train?" I've never really thoguht that made much sense, no doubt because I was born after the sixties. When I woke up this morning with the song in my head that is quoted in our headline for today, I finally got the train thing.
We're all aging, the train is going forward. Unless we *do* something about it, we're going to keep going, and the destination isn't a place where we want to be. We can't just hang out and claim to be indifferent... if we don't drastically change our actions, we know what will happen.
Right now, we don't have a way to stop the train, or to jump off at one stop and go back a few stations. We do, however, have a way to slow it down. You know what that is.
For some people, CR is a spectator sport. It's interesting to watch people who carefully monitor their Calories and nutrition, and it's certainly got to be fun to observe as I screw up over and over again in my quest for hardcore CR. But for some, there's no compelling reason to actually take up CR as a lifestyle. It's too hard, too weird, too much of a hassle, might not work, might work and might lead to living longer which might for some reason be bad, might cause you to become obsessed with exotic salad greens, turn orange, and carefully read your girlfriend's RDA percentages with the rapt attention that most men only give to the sports page.
Friends, the train is moving forward. There are two things you can do about it, and you know what they are. Come on, it's a quiz. What are the two things you can do?
You guessed it.
1. You can donate to the Mprize. That's not that hard.
2. You can use the only tool we have right now to slow your own aging process. Lots of readers are doing it. It's a little odd, but it's actually a whole lot of fun.
If you choose to do nothing, you have by your very inaction damned yourself to dying earlier than you need to.
It's really that simple.
It's none of my business what you do with your life... eat eggwhites or not, see if I care.
But I do care about you because if you're reading this, chances are you're the kind of person I'd really like to hang out with. I'm planning to be around for a very long time, and I want to make sure that the fun people are here too.
The nightmare I had night before last about MR being so sad that I wasn't going to make it escape velocity was a big wake up call for me about my exercise. It's just silly to ignore something I can do to improve my health and keep my bones from getting fragile. So today I was back at the gym at 7, and did thirty minutes on the treadmill followed by leg weights. I've always found that love is a stronger motivation than fear, and the hope of spending many, many years with my genius boy is more than enough reason to drag myself to the gym.
Last night, I had another interesting dream. I was on my way to a birthday party for my grandparents, who are in their nineties and doing great... they go dancing more often than I do! In the dream, I had to navigate through a run-down building that was missing a few walls and windows on my way to the party, and a cousin named Amy was leading me through the maze.
We got to a point on the eighth floor of a building where Amy said that I needed to jump through the window and onto the ledge of a next door building. It wasn't a far jump, and I might have been able to make it, but it was a big drop eight floors down to the street. I didn't want to risk it.
People on the other side in the building made fun of me and said, "Come on, jump, we did it, you'll make it!" "WHat are you, some kind of wimp?" But I continued to refuse, and said that I'd be happy to walk the long way around the building and go up eight flights of stairs again, but that I just wouldn't take the risk with the short cut.
Finally Amy agreed to show me the long route, and as we walked, I explained to her that now that I do CR and volunteer for the Mprize and put so much of my energy into living longer, I'm no longer willing to take stupid chances with my life and health.
Amy said she understood, and that there was another person at the party who had also refused to make the jump and had taken the long way around. She said she'd introduce me to him once we got there.
I walked into the party, and sitting quietly in the back of the room was MR.
Posted by april at May 19, 2005 7:52 AM
Comments
What a cool dream! No skydiving or technical mountain climbing for you guys, I guess. Being careful is also important, isn't it?
Posted by: Mary at May 17, 2005 6:31 PM
Just a question re: protein levels. Seems to be some research that minimizing protein leads to the same longevity effects as CR, which would indicated that CR's benefit may be due to lowered protein (if true). Then we get other data that suggest it's all calories, and macronutrient composition doesn't matter much. Any idea if anyone has looked into this concept, and if so what the current thinking is? It's pretty clear April, that you eat a relatively high protein diet, so is this beneficial or detrimental? The one article I know of is in the Journal of Bioenergetics and Biomembranes, by Sanz et al, 2004, 36(6) 545-552. Just curious what some of the science types think on this research.
By the way, the line from the post title is from a song "Free Will" by the excellent Canadian band Rush (at least that's the first one that popped into my head.)
Take care
Posted by: Chris at May 19, 2005 6:59 AM