Adaptation

Of all the qualities a human has this one quality is likely to lead to a long life more than any.

Both genetic and behavioral adaptation is a vital thing to cultivate in yourself from childhood.

I think I first started noticing that people who could not easily adapt to changes often were the first to die I was 9 to 15 years old. And these deaths were often from ages 12 to 30. But, this doesn't mean that you have to wear the latest styles your whole life, it just means you can deal with people changing in ways that would have been unfathomable to your generation while growing up.

For me, the hardest things to adapt to are likely 9-11, young people wearing so many nose rings and piercings and tattoos, and people stealing trucks and mowing down 100 people with a Semi truck on a bridge.

So, that is what I have trouble with. I also have trouble with a president who rapes women and grabs their genitals without asking permission and a president who is also very corrupt without ethics or morals and then expects us to believe (Anything) he says when you cannot believe anything he says (sort of the way you cannot believe most used car salesmen either in the world).

So, I would say the capacity to tolerate change likely is the biggest factor in longevity. the capacity for not only genetic adaptation but also cultural and psychological adaptation is a key to longevity for us all.

Think about this for a moment. We are born. Often we lose our father or our mother by the time we are 5 or 10 years old to divorce or abandonment, then we are trying to graduate high school and figure out what to do with our lives. Then we have a friend who often becomes a spouse. But, if we do this too young (before 20 or 25) often this ends up being a complete failure for us and some people never recover from this disaster (especially women with children) around the world.

So then, it is found that longevity also goes to those who marry and have children the latest in life because by then one has a career established and because of maturity the marriage and family is more likely to survive longer. So, even this is an adaptation from the way things were in the past on earth.

But, in the 1970s and 1980s women often waited too long to get married and pregnant and suffered the fate of not getting married or having children. Less women are having this problem now because most realize they can have children without a husband in many cases. But, even then likely this is better done in one's 30s with an established career or business rather than in one's 20s too.

In my own life I met someone I wanted to marry quite young but then realized I was too young to settle down. I see this happen all the time now where the boy goes off to college and the 18 year old girl is left going to a community college and they have to break up for college to be useful. So, even if those two would have gotten married and stayed together for life when I was 18 in many many cases this cannot happen now and be successful so great are the educational and financial changes to people's lives here in the U.S. since the 1960s.

So, even though I dated several girls from age 15 to 25 I had to let who I would have married in another era go because I knew I wasn't going to be ready for marriage for another 5 or 6 years time. So, I married my live in girl friend at age 26 because we were going to have a son.

Adaptation: The capacity for adaptation even if you don't want to adapt prevents suicide or homicide from ending young lives.

So, adaptation in the end I see as the most important survival quality to a very long life.

However, if you don't combine this with compassion for yourself and all others life is very meaningless indeed.

So, what good is a long life with no meaning or happiness at all?