Phillip C. McGraw’s words couldn’t ring more true when it comes to living our best lives. As we all know, sprints are over quickly while marathons take time. Lots of time. Which brings us to our longevity.

Longevity is the holy grail if you talk to most people. Anyone selling a supplement or a pharmaceutical is weaving that word in and out of their pitch.

The focus always seems to be on quantity and not quality.

If someone told you you had to do hard labor in a prison work gang in a Louisiana swamp for the rest of your life, I bet you wouldn’t be hoping for a longer life. An extreme example but here’s my point: Would you like to hang around here suffering, lonely, incapacitated, bed ridden, broke and at the mercy of an overtaxed healthcare system? Today?

I remember an elderly gentleman I shared a hospital room with many years ago. I was just a kid. The curtains were always closed but I could hear him groaning over there. Every morning when the nurse asked him what he wanted for breakfast, he would mutter “rat poison.” I never forgot that.

As many of you know, I’m 75 years old, on Social Security and live in a retirement community. I am considered elderly which grinds my gears. I consider myself an elder athlete these days and I can give as good as I get.

Here is where I see suffering on a grand scale. I see the lack of mobility. I see the walkers, the canes, the motorized grocery carts, the misery, the helplessness, the disorientation and the palor on the over medicated faces of these souls who are old before their time.

They have no muscle tone, they are bent and shriveled and seem resigned to their fate.

They never got the memo. Their generation just thinks life is a crap shoot. They didn’t know they would have to wait patiently for some underpaid nursing home attendant to come and change their bed pan.

They believed everything that came out of a TV set. They even thought certain menthol cigarettes were good for a cough. !!??

They didn’t know about nutrition, or the benefits of cardiovascular and resistance training. They didn’t know that if you take care of your body, it will take care of you.

They didn’t realize that these could be the best years of their life.

They never got the memo….but you just did.