Leave me alone. I don't want to live till 100, and beyond!

I spotted a student rushing past my office.  "Hey" I said more as a hello than to call him over.  There was no response. I figured that he was way past my office to even hear me.

He then peeped in through the door.

When chatting, he said,"you are a vegetarian, right?"

"For the most part.  Unless I fall off the wagon."  A few days ago, I intentionally got off the wagon, had that all-American food, and then climbed back on.

"We have gone meatless Mondays at home" he said.  "The oldest is having some trouble with it.  But, last Monday after eating burritos with beans and veggies, he didn't seem to miss meat."

"Of course, man, once the system gets the proteins it craves for, it is happy.  And beans are awesome proteins" I said.

We talked some more and he left.

"The secrets of the world’s longest-lived people include community, family, exercise and plenty of beans" screams this report in the Wall Street Journal.  And yet again reminding me that if I want to keep on schedule for the countdown, then I should stop eating beans and healthy foods and walking!

More than 65% of what people in the blue zones ate came from complex carbohydrates: sweet potatoes in Okinawa, Japan; wild greens in Ikaria, Greece; squash and corn in Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula. Their diet consists mainly of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans and other carbohydrates. They eat meat but only small amounts, about five times a month, usually on celebratory occasions.

As I joke sometimes, eating meat is not the Bill of Rights!

The cornerstone of every longevity diet in the world was the humble bean. One five-country study showed that beans were the only food that predicted a longer life—for each 20-gram serving (about two tablespoons) eaten a day, the chance of dying dropped by 8%. Fava beans in Sardinia, black beans in Costa Rica, lentils in Ikaria, soybeans in Okinawa. Seventh-Day Adventists, America’s longest-lived subculture, eat all kinds of beans, taking their cue from God’s injunction, in the book of Genesis, to eat the fruits of “seed-bearing plants.”

I didn't know that what this atheist and the Adventists have in common does amount to a hill of beans ;)

Dollar for dollar, most beans deliver more protein than beef. More important, beans’ high fiber content serves as a gut compost of sorts, enabling healthy bacteria to thrive.

I simply do not understand why most people don't get this.  Even back in the "veg" India, especially in my part of the old country, people don't include the vast varieties of beans in their daily foods.  Instead, they load up on carbs--hills of rice.

They lived in places where fresh vegetables were cheap and accessible. Their kitchens were set up so that making healthy food was quick and easy. Almost every trip to the store, a friend’s house, work or school occasioned a walk. Their houses didn’t have mechanized conveniences to do house work, kitchen work or yard work; they did it by hand.

But then, stupid is as stupid does; I made this for dinner last night, and I am blogging this after a five mile walk!

A basmati rice dish with onions, tomatoes, and edamame;
with a side of boiled peanuts with coconut and onions

Damn beans!  I don't want to live to be a centenarian; I wonder if there is anything I can learn from these long-lived people?

When it comes to longevity, the long-standing support of a community is significant. In the U.S., you’re likely to die eight years earlier if you’re lonely, compared with people who have strong social networks.

Aha, that's the way I can make sure my odometer stops at 75 ;)

We were young, once!

"Did you watch the game, Dr. Khé?" asked a student when the class met on Monday.  A warm-up of a different kind before we got into discussing the learning materials. It was, of course, the joshing small-talk time.  So, nothing about what I did during the Super Bowl.

(If students were to read my blog, perhaps they will wonder why I am being so not revealing anything about myself in the classroom when I do that in a lot more public manner here in the blog. If they do, I bet they have also figured out why.)

During the conversation with the two women, when I asked the older woman about her growing up years, they remarked about how they, too, were young once.

That was a profound comment, I thought. As Ken Robinson noted in his hilarious, and thought-provoking, talk, we don't imagine Shakespeare as having been a kid once and giving his parents and teachers quite some grief, especially with his English!  When we see, meet with, people who are "old," we so easily think of of them as nothing but old. A grandma is a grandma is a grandma to us.  But, that grandma, too, was once a young girl, who ran and played and cried like any of us.

Over the winter break, when talking with my mother's aunt, I asked her about her childhood. It was back in the old ancestral village, in a traditional and orthodox Brahmin household. After she "came of age," the norms then precluded her from playing outside with other kids--even girls. She wasn't even allowed to sit on the steps outside and watch others play. It was a house-arrest of sorts!  That is a small piece about her childhood. But, it says a lot, doesn't it? About her life then. That she longed to play with other kids and she could not.

Every once in a while, in the obituary pages of our local newspaper, the photo of the "old" person who died is accompanied by a photo of that same person much earlier in their life. I have no idea what message they wish to convey, but to me the message is always the same: it is not merely the old person who died. That young person they once were also died. The kid that they once were also died. It is, after all, the kid who became a teenager, who grew into an adult, became old, and died.

Young we might be today, but we too will be nothing but old in the future--if we live that long.  Imagine if you were seen by others as nothing but an old man or an old woman, as if your lively and energetic childhood and youth and middle age never existed at all!

As this wonderful song from Romeo and Juliet put it,

A rose will bloom;
it then will fade
so does a youth;
so does the fairest maid

Nothing new, yes. As Yeats wrote, "That is no country for old men."