Point of View: Just Sit

My son said recently he thought I’d live to 100, submitting an article that found a link between longevity and vigorous exercise, though if there’s a danger point beyond which you shouldn’t go they haven’t ascertained it yet, nor have I.

I’ve always had 80, the age at which my father died, in mind, though his younger brother, who, as far as I know, was not particularly athletic — and who my mother said was the biggest hypochondriac she’d ever met — lived, with all his wits about him, until 103. He lived a quiet life, as I am, and as my father did finally; had he kept on the way he’d been going, he told me, everyone said he’d be dead by 40.

“Your father would go off and misbehave and then come back to Bennington and bury his head in a book,” an old friend of his told me once. Eventually he lit out for the territory — France in his case — and the company of a lively, lighthearted woman who took things as they came and who refused to admit any puritanical impediments.

“Don’t worry — I’ve got a pretty good thing going,” were his last words to me, as I lingered on the eve of our departure at his bedroom door.

Mere athleticism is not the panacea that my son may think it is; the recent suicides at relatively young ages of two outstanding athletes I’ve known come immediately to mind.

Lightheartedness seems to me more to the point. And that may be achieved less through moving (however purposefully) to and fro than by simply sitting, with awareness, which is what I think my uncle who lived to 103 did, certainly in his later years, most of the time.