There’s a great thing about starting at the bottom rung in many circumstances.
The beauty is that you scratch and claw your way over the most harrowing obstacles.
That bottomless hunger and determination to utterly eat shit is irreplaceable and often lost as you age.
People become complacent. They give up dreaming and surrender working hard for what they really want. That’s when you die, not when your spirit leaves your body, and you join the dust.
It’s s when you stop actively learning, achieving, and enjoying this beautiful earth.
A study of Shell Oil employees shows that people who retire at age 55 and live to be at least 65 die earlier than people who retire at 65. After age 65, the early retirees have a 37 percent higher risk of death than counterparts that retired at 65.
That study found that age 55 retirees are 89 percent more likely to die within a decade of retirement than their peers who retire at 65.
One reason is that humans weren’t meant to exist to play golf and fish solely. Retirement should be the start of another career, one in which you can deploy skills honed by years of practice.
Man (speaking of both sexes) is meant to help others, whether volunteering at a soup kitchen, swaddling babies at a hospital, or mentoring delinquents in juvie or a prison.
Many people lose momentum and energy as they age, but I believe personal choices play a vital role too.
So does freedom and purpose.
Humans were meant to be free to roam the world, or at least their block/house.
When you rely on someone to care for you, one loses an essential sense of independence.
Consider nursing homes.
According to an article in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, the median and mean time spent in a nursing home before death is 5 months.
Fifty-three percent died within 6 months of placement, although the median length varied by sex: men survived only three months while women live for eight months, the article found.
Critics point out that those people are in a nursing home because they need close care, and they’re right. But just as college graduates weren’t meant to live in their parent’s basement, jobless, adults thrive when they can make some personal choices for themselves.
You die of old age because you stop waking up with a purpose. That’s not isolated to the elderly. I’ve seen the same symptoms in people of all ages who are lost, frustrated, and have given up.
It’s like trying to reach a restaurant in a town which you have never lived. You must map and trek terrain if you want to reach your destination.
Deep down, everyone knows what they want to do. You have to seize the confidence to act.