The Freedom to Rest is one of the many keys to longevity

 People often work themselves to death at age 20, 30, 40, 50 or whenever. I observed this in the 1950s for the first time and was somewhat horrified by watching people die like this often doing jobs they hated then.

So, I began to see how people suffered and died a lot in the 1950s. So, I wanted something better than this.

So, watching people suffer in the 1950s showed me slowly how to have a better life.

I began to see that College (or working smarter but not harder)  was often the answer. Leverage was the answer to not dying young on a battlefield or through overwork enslaved to your employer somewhere who didn't really care whether you lived or died.

Slowly I learned how to stay alive and to earn a living and still live in beautiful places and how to make my life an adventure whenever possible. By age 30 I had begun to live a life I actually wanted to live especially from ages 32 to 37 when my father passed away. His passing actually helped me more than anything else in staying alive now until 76 years of age. Why?

Because although my father was one of the healthiest people I ever knew "Sort of like Jack Lalane who started the whole Gym and running thing in the U.S." he didn't like doctors. So, when he was diagnosed with Prostate cancer in 1980 he decided to heal himself with a Macrobiotic diet of mostly rice. This didn't work and he died in 1985 from cancer.

This taught me that although preventative medicine of diet and exercise is good you still need medical doctors to stay alive these days too. So, this taught me to get things diagnosed early on and to get them all fixed whenever possible.

But, nothing prepared me for the heart virus I got when I was 50 years old. Luckily I had health insurance so I could survive this without going bankrupt. So, every step of the way we are learning or we are dead.

What I learned at age 50 is if I didn't retire then I was going to die. So, retiring allowed me to rest enough to survive my heart virus.

This morning as I was coaching my son how to stay alive with his illness at age 50 that he is dealing with now I said to him: "The Freedom to Rest" will allow you to stay alive and in order to do this you have to retire (at least for now).

So, for ages 50 and beyond or for anytime in life you have a serious illness the "Freedom to Rest" is what is going to keep you alive more than anything else.

So, first of all having health insurance and being somewhere stable in your life around friends or relatives that you want to be around all help to insure that you go on surviving your life on into the future.

So, creating "The Freedom to Rest when you need to" is one of the many keys to longevity along with a good diet and exercise and being around the people you love in a place where you want to be.

Living a long time can be a good thing if you learn enough to be able to do it through resting, good diet, good exercise and a good place to live with people you like being around.

By God's Grace