And the Cranky Will Survive

Like many others in this world, I keep a running tab of things that just don’t seem fair to me. Rich people who hoard their money. Nice people who get sick over and over again. People who lose their jobs in their 50’s without a hope of finding something else with even a little bit of dignity. Snow storms in April in Montreal.  I could go on.

Recently I came across a study, almost every page of which fits very nicely into the NOT FAIR category. It’s called The Longevity Project and I’m trying to decide if it’s worth reading in detail or avoiding completely because I do not – I repeat, DO NOT – like its conclusions. See what you think.

The Longevity Project followed 1500 children, all born around 1910. The current authors, Dr. Howard Friedman and Dr. Leslie Martin from University of California Riverside, didn’t come into the project until 1990, but the original researcher, Dr. Lewis Terman, left a treasure-trouve of information in meticulous records about each person as they thrived and died over 8 decades.

Friedman and Martin became interested in who lived long and whose life was cut short – either by accident or illness. What they found contradicted much of what we usually think of as traits that will guarantee a long life.

Marriage will keep you alive… but only if you’re male. The men who were married most of their lives lived well into their 70’s. Divorced and single men did not live as long because they picked up bad behaviors which cut short their lives. Married women lived slightly longer than divorced women who remarried. But the women who divorced or were widowed and never remarried lived the longest. So much for us needing companionship.

Early retirement, taking it easy and a go-with-the-flow attitude will put you in the grave earlier. So you thought all that time at the golf course and going to Florida in the winters was good for your health. Think again. Idle hands do you no favours. Older people who continue working past retirement age lived longer than those who chose a laid-back life-style in their 60’s.

Cheerful, charming, worry-free people have more friends but not longer lives. Turns out being shy and introverted are good things if you want to stick around for a long time. Outgoing people are more likely to drink, smoke and party harder, shortening their longevity… while their introverted friends tend to find more stable jobs and relationships and just generally, act more responsibly. And if you’re a worry-wart? You’ll probably live longer than your friends who take life as it comes. Worriers take less risks while the Pollyanna’s of the world ignore real threats and fail to always follow medical advice (it’s all such a “downer”).

It goes on and on in this vein, exploding long-held ideas about who reaches a ripe old age: Jocks die earlier than nerds. Owning a pet makes absolutely no difference to how long you live. Religious people don’t live any longer than those who have no religion. Cheerfulness is comparable to high blood pressure and over-the-top cholesterol as a death risk factor. Being loved and cared for throughout your life does not mean you will have good health. And struggling with daily Do’s and Don’t’s about exercise and diets doesn’t seem to make a wit of difference in the end: you have to maintain a healthy, vigorous lifestyle but the details don’t matter.

I’m quite confused now. If I live into my 90’s, does it mean I’ve been fooling myself all these years and I’m actually not that nice a person? Or am I an exception and I will find myself surrounded by crabby people my own age? I already knew my dog Toby wasn’t making life any easier, but should I hold jealously onto my singleness because it’s a longevity feather in my cap?

My initial reaction was to pretend I didn’t find the study in the first place, but I’m partial to a long life. So, starting tomorrow, I’ve decided to worry constantly about everything I do, in hopes of adding another year or two to my short, so far cheerful, life.

Statistic: As of 2017, life expectancy in Quebec is 84.5 years for women and 80.6 years for men (an average for both crabby and cheerful personality types).

Janet Torge