673 thoughts on “What if the human life span keeps increasing?”

1. The thing is, that if our youth are seeing a potential life of elderly years lived in pain and suffering, then I can see how this would cause a young person to want to live recklessly, as a way perhaps to have some freedom before the limits of a ‘failing’ body sets in. Not that I agree with this, but I can understand how this happens.

2. ‘Our older generation has a wealth of knowledge and experience to share and we in turn have a duty of care to them, to provide dignity, love, connection, care and respect up until their last breath.’ This has also to do with the knowing that quality of life is essential for everyone young or old when we live without love and care, we live without connection. Living a life without connection is a life not lived.

3. They say you cannot teach an old dog new tricks but I would dispute that for it depends on the willingness and commitment of the dog and the desire to go forward and not fall back on well-worn comfortably closeting ways.

4. Thank you Rebecca, and that understanding that it is the quality of life that is essential actually has to start all the way from childhood, from kindergarten even… Making sure that our kids are not just being processed into more intellectual fodder but are actually staying connected with themselves

5. It’s interesting how things just do not match up these days – we are living longer, we have far more expertise, resources and knowledge and yet we are getting sicker, and we don’t like ageing and some of the behaviours we see in adults are totally immature. It feels like we just cannot accept, and are just having a major hump about anything and everything and the reality is the last thing we want to look at.

6. I’d say that the ‘young and carefree(careless)’ attitude may be seen in our younger years but it’s not there in the joyful, caring and sensitive earlier years. I feel very young and yet I don’t disregard the fact that my choices don’t come with consequences. The live forever young attitude disregards the truth of our bodies and seeks to remain irresponsible rather than young.

7. There was a time when the social expectations of a generation were quite simple, when we hoped for good steady jobs and an easy retirement. Good health was always there too, but somehow it seemed less important than making sure the fundamentals of life were taken care of, maybe because there was not the rates of illness and disease that we have now. Now, we hope that there will be enough care for the ageing generations, now we hope that health will not be so bad, because bad is inevitable. This does not seem to me to be a current that can keep on going, that there has to be some kind of a breaking point where the realities of life, of what life is and what it is all about are taken out in to the light and what is creating ill health on such a massive scale is finally brought to account.

8. With those statistics on cancer does it not make sense to review and look at the way we are living life, the choices we make which will then be played out in how we feel and what the body is experiencing. I know when I have made changes to support my body, to care and nurture my body the whole quality of my life has shifted. It has been a huge confirmation that I choose my life and how I live.

9. I absolutely agree Rebecca that “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old” and the fact that is does simply shows how, up to now, the true education of children as to the care needed for their bodies and the responsibility they have to do so, has been sorely lacking. We can apply all the quick fix band-aids to the ill-health of the world but until we start at the beginning, when the child is young, we are never going to be able to see the change in these shocking statistics that we would all like to see.

10. There are more and more signs that the lifespan is increasing less and for some population groups like white people in the US and to a lesser degree those living in the UK their mortality is actually rising at the moment which means their life expectancy is actually decreasing.

11. “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.” And as we all live in cycles, how we are living at the end of one life shapes what we will meet as we begin the next life.

12. I agree our life span is increasing however the quality of life is missing for many, especially when dementia sets in because it affects the whole family, and the more we continue to commit to life, and interact with those younger than us the less likely we are to succumb to dementia.

13. We really have to question if length of life is what needs to be championed or if its quality of life. If we are living longer, but getting sicker then are we better off? The other issues I see with many older people is a withdrawal from life, wanting to stay safe in old patterns. We are not designed to live this way in stagnation and contraction and our bodies and quality of life have to suffer.

14. It is not about expanding life span, but deepening the quality of life lived.

    1. Quite right and this means taking advantage of the opportunities that present themselves and not to check out however comfortable that is in the short term.

15. Every milli-second of life is precious and contributes to our experience old age. We’re ageing all the time and there’s no difference between young, middle and later years when we have the awareness of our multi-dimensional and not just human selves.

16. We have to stop compartmentalising illnesses. Dementia, for example, cannot be considered separately from the causes of other chronic ill-health conditions: disregard of self, self abusive lifestyle choices, dis-connection from self and life. Research studies now link dementia to cardio-vascular disease, hypertension, obesity, smoking and lack of physical exercise. The quality of life lived is a key determinant of chronic ill-health conditions
    https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/about-dementia/types-dementia/risk-factors-vascular-dementia

17. The statistics are terrifying… like watching a train crash about to happen, knowing its going to happen, and amazed that the drivers of the train (whether that be all of us, or those in Government) don’t seem to be adjusting the controls to prevent the crash. When will we act?

18. Yes there is no real equality in how we view people when it comes to age. I remember working on a program once where we asked members of the community to keep something in their back yards for research purposes. After some time this was no longer needed and when I rang one elder woman she was a bit sad as she felt that she was somehow contributing to her community by doing this. And yes whilst that was true, I felt sad that some of our elders feel so un-welcome by society and so unable to contribute that participating in research is their only way.

19. We pull at every strand of life until we are forced to admit our whole reason for being here is quality. Living 1000 years has no advancement if there’s no love in there.

20. I find it ironic that we seem to want to live longer (or are we just putting off facing death?) yet, many older people don’t seem to be enjoying this later period of their lives.

21. The responsibility that we human beings are asked to live in is totally being avoided. What if we only had medicine for the necessities and that it was up to us to live a life that meant truly loving and honouring ourselves. That each choice we made supported us to be healthy, vital and joyful or they are choices that leave us to rely on a health system and blame them when things don’t go to plan. We seriously need to address the issue currently as it stands or as the health systems are showing us there won’t be any, as they are on brink of collapsing.

22. Spending a few hours a week visiting a rest home is a real eye opener as to the lives that so many of our aged population are living. In fact, in general they are not truly living, but simply existing. From what I observe I can see that our care of the aged needs an urgent overhaul. But that is still only a band-aid. The quality of our elder years needs to start with true education in our very early years.

23. I love this idea of connecting children and younger people with older members of the community! We can learn so much about life, people, relationships, history and so many other things simply through engaging in conversations with people, and young people today seem to be spending more and more time online rather than out in the world making these connections.

24. Let’s observe our elderly now so that we have the opportunity to make different choices, choices that lead us to a settlement in our final days.

25. We are always living the consequences of our own choices and there is no escaping that. If we want to guarantee the quality of what we are to live in our future, no point wishing/hoping/planning, just start living that quality now.

26. It is true that the healthcare systems are trying to organise themselves in to a more far reaching community based service so that hospital beds are free for whoever will need them next. But the constant turnover of patients that are becoming more complicated and multi symptomatic is creating a huge strain on the local services that are generally understaffed and underfunded. So, people are often being passed from one service to the other, in a constant chain of referrals, which only adds to the sense of stress and complexity of their situation. The reality is though, that there is no clear cut solution to this ever increasing population dilemma. Everyone is doing the best they can with what they’ve got, even in the face of potentially collapsing healthcare systems we continue to turn up to work and to give the best care that we can.

27. I now see so many people around me who, having taken full responsibility for their lives, are truly showing what it is like to age gracefully. There are now some amazing role models amongst us.

28. To a large extent we have looked at our elderly populations as a burden, rather than a blessing for the great wisdom they have to share with younger generations. Perhaps this happens because it is easier to blame them for having to take care of them as they age and become sick, rather than seeing how we care for ourselves now will determine how healthy WE are in the future as the elderly population ourselves.

29. It also begs to consider that walking away from who we truly are and feeling life when we are young influences us when we are older.

30. It is strange the disregard we can all choose to live in, in the ignorance that “it won’t happen to us” when the stats are all around us proving otherwise. I remember clearly living my life with cigarettes and alcohol being an absolute. I knew they were bad for me, particularly cigarettes – I sold inhalers for COPD, so had an acute understanding of what would happen to me if I continued, but I can quite honestly say that made no difference to me what so ever! I was even realistic about the fact that I would never have a baby as the thought of not drinking or smoking for nine months terrified me. And that was because I genuinely thought I needed those things to cope with my life. I hadn’t learnt to deal with my feelings by that point and so was continuously overwhelmed with them and so smoking and drinking were how I numbed myself to all that to get through my days.

    Luckily I now know different and have easily managed to stopped smoking and drinking and feel great as a result, but it was only once I actually started to experience the early signs of COPD that I managed to stop, because I could feel it was happening to me. So I do understand how many people choose the thing that’s going to give them a really low quality of life/slow death over being overwhelmed by something they don’t know what to do with. It’s a shame there isn’t a class on the national curriculum entitled “feelings” where everyone got supported with this from a young age. Something I consider essential to my role in life is to be open about how I feel, to show anyone and everyone that it’s ok to drop the stiff upper lip, a way that is especially adopted in the UK.

31. Working as an Aged Care worker I’ve seen a lot of what you’ve highlighted Rebecca. Not just in the elderly but across the board. There’s a lot of advice about making healthy lifestyle choices but these unhealthy choices are the more extreme versions of choices we don’t want to feel and be aware of having made and expressed on the energetic level. Only Universal Medicine has brought this aspect of healthy living choices to the table that make it far more sustainable and practical that I have experienced thus far.

32. The life style choices we choose when we are younger definitely shape our future the problem is when we are young we feel invincible and it is not until later on we wish we had made better choices earlier on, the key is to understand about choices and take responsibility for them.

    1. And educate our kids, not just with knowledge from books, but to include an energetic understanding of themselves, their world… through lived examples ie the responsibility we have to live that way alongside them.

33. How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old. This is so true as the Aged Care Facilities are full of our older generation that are struggling with the end of their life physically and mentally because of lack of this basic choice to honour and respect their bodies and make loving life choices. They have been caught up in their era’s ideals or beliefs from war and life’s hardships and basically been in survival mode to get through.

34. ‘Our older generation has a wealth of knowledge and experience to share and we in turn have a duty of care to them, to provide dignity, love, connection, care and respect up until their last breath.” Great to see this in print Rebecca. The elderly are so discarded in this day and age and there are so many profiteering from false ways of keeping us young from plastic surgery to expensive youth enhancing lotions and potions and all this just as a veneer and disregarding the beautiful soul that has so much to share and give back if only given the chance. It is definitely the true quality of life that we have turned our back on but that the elderly may well have a greater handle on underneath all those wrinkles. Let us help them reconnect and as we honour them bring quality back into all our lives.

35. The management and care of people who have dementia is fast becoming a major part of life in Britain, with hospital and community workers and families all having to pull together to support these extremely vulnerable adults. There is special training available and charitable organisations who can offer support and training as well. And this is all fantastic, but it feels to me like we are all working to manage the tide of dementia that is sweeping across our elders, which is exhausting and brings up so much fear because then we see our younger generations, spaced out on computer games and high sugar diets and there is a great anxiousness about what will become of them too, raising questions about how will we all care for each other.

36. It makes sense that if we hold on to the false belief that all we have is this one life that we will try and make it last for as long as we can. But if we embrace the fact that we will return again and again, quality of life may be chosen over quantity.

37. Is it possible we try to expand our life span at all cost simply to avoid dealing with what we have lived and left behind at the end of it? When we die we will get to see what choices we made and what impact they had on everything. We are reminded that we are more then just a human being and in this reminder the span of our responsibility gets more visible.

38. Living in the falsities that we are doing better than previous generations because we are living longer is an absolute illusion that many have fallen for. For if the quality of life is disconnected to who we truly are then each step we have taken is away from our origins. I know i would much rather have life lived with this quality, connected to my inner essence, the origins of who I am and have a life lived for its purpose as to how it currently is a life lived that is of survival and function.

39. When we start to look at changing the way we live to make our life our medicine instead of our poison it is not only what we do that is important but much more the quality in which we do it – for this we need to look being the physical and functional aspects of life and make life about energy first and foremost.

    1. A group of us this morning were talking about when we make simple moves in life about function and forget the quality, how it halts a flow – we in effect invest more in the habit of function than the energetic quality we are doing it in. Each leads to a very different experience in the body and over time a very different state of health and well-being.

       1. this is so true Rosanna, I have experienced both and can say that when I am focussed on function my quality drops and my body suffers the anxiety, hardening, abruptness and drive that comes with. Yet when I focus on the quality that which needs to be done is done with ease and flow without and strain on the body. In fact in the latter the body is left to in it’s natural quality.

    2. Super important to remember that it is in fact – though often dismissed because it is not the usual reality, that ease and flow are natural qualities to the body.

40. It is true that we need to look at our lifestyles to combat the increasing numbers of illness and disease both physical and mental that our societies are facing. We have for the past decades lived a life of seeming luxury where we could do what we wanted no matter the toll it would take on us as for much we could rely on our medical abilities and health care systems to take care of it. Having an increase in medical ability seems to have led to a decrease in self responsibility. We are now facing the price we are paying for this and the only way to turn the tide is to increase our awareness of what our lifestyle choices are doing to us.

41. “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.” If we have for example not taken responsibility for our health when we were younger then that shows up as we age.

42. The problem is not that we become older but more so in the way in which we become older. We have a choice, to look at it now or to wait until that time that we will be forced to look at it because of the bankruptcy our national health systems will be faced with due to the increasing cost and the fewer people that can pay for the system.

43. Every time I have spoken to someone that works in age care about how we are getting older/living longer, they generally comment on how a Iot of elderly just want to pass over, but their family keeps wanting them to hang on, even though it is a major strain on the family and the person in question.

    1. Thank you Toni, this is a fantastic comment. It raises lots of questions about love and attachment. I suppose it is important to be understanding of how scary it is to let someone go, especially when you know you will never see them again. But this is where perhaps our culture lets us down, as there could be so much more dialogue about death and passing over and the other dimensions of life, so that we are prepared right from young to be able to accept the changing cycles of life.

44. How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old. Life becomes so meaningful and full of purpose and beauty when we live it purposefully right from the beginning through to our graceful end.

45. This truth becomes obvious as we age “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old”. The earlier we wake up to the responsibility of looking after our bodies, the better; but it is never too late to change how we live.

46. While statistically our health has improved from the perspective of measuring length of life and communicable diseases that killed many in the past. But we are developing many other, more complex and equally damaging illnesses from our very way of life, which needs to be fully acknowledged

    1. I work with the elderly, and the number of different medications they have to take for different illnesses is mindblowing. Sometimes I wonder if the tablets are compatible and how is the body really coping with all of the medicines.

47. Approaching old age with joy and vitality has not been something that most elderly people can relate to but it is possible. I know for myself I am enjoying my elder years and have more vitality than I did in my 50’s. We see retirement as the goal for our later years but it can be so easy to vegetate and let ourselves go, we are not built to have sedentary lives our purpose in life is to serve until our last breath.

48. “It is an inevitable fact of life that we will all grow older and yet we like to live as if we will be young forever – in the end we see that our choices of lifestyle catch up with us, and at that point the ripple effects are significant.” So what if we were to live our lives from a young age, knowing that the choices we made about the care we took of ourselves were going to have the same level of significance on our bodies, but in a postive way rather than a negative one? Perhaps this would inspire us to change the way we live consistently throughout our lives and to not be forced to make changes as a result of an illness or disease because we have to.

49. Our extended ageing seems to just be highlighting that it’s the lifestyle choices that really count. Bagging 9 out of the top 10 spots for popular diseases it’s the likes of diabetes, obesity, smoking, alcohol related diseases that are making the headlines. Will we learn, or will we continue to pile on the pressure to the NHS saying you sort it out and take no responsibility ourselves?

50. Your awesome blog Rebecca, reflects very clearly our need to start to take responsibility for the life choices and ways of being we are choosing that are causing such alarming statistics on Dementia. This is a much needed topic of conversation for us all to be informed of what can cause Dementia so that we can take the responsible steps needed to not become a part of the statistics.

51. In the US the life expectancy has actually been shrinking for the last two years – it stayed the same for women but dropped by 0.2 years for men, so 0.1 overall. Something similar is happening in the UK though not in many other countries yet, but perhaps the rise in life expectancy may pause in the near future.

52. In honour of ageing and the remarkable qualities I have let myself access as I have got older, I really enjoy this opportunity to have this discussion. Once feared and now embraced, it is impossible for me not to appreciate the changes in my relationship with ageing since meeting and working with Serge Benhayon.

    1. The process is that I deeply appreciate what has been lived and the choices now of what is the potential to live.

53. Our marker of health and our definition of health are on a sliding scale, with a downward spiral. If we continue with this trend, we will easily lose sight of what our natural and innate vitality really is – and on some level this has already happened – and then we are lost, until such time that some who lives truthfully and with the natural spark can remind us of what once was. Children are very good at this reflection of vitality, and so it is good to question and to ask what is it that then dulls this innate and inbuilt natural source of energy, that leads to a society so sorely in need of rehabilitation?

    1. Yes, it is quite strange that we don’t have a working response for the obesity epidemic.

54. Dementia is happening at earlier and earlier ages, which is, I feel, a reflection of how most of us in society are living. How important is it that we use such examples and statistics to revise the quality with which we live, so that we can make the changes that allow us to have a life lived in fullness rather than have a life lived half-full only?

55. The aging body will have its ailments as we discard that which no longer serves us and also clear that which we have perhaps unnecessarily taken on board. This not only happens as we get old, but is happening at earlier and earlier stages and ages. But in this process how important is it that we take full responsibility for our choices and actions and allow the body to do what it does. And by taking responsibility, we are then not burdening others with that which is rightly ours to deal with. And in this process we are not alone either as we are supported, so long as we are there to work as a team – and this is the blessing in itself too!

56. We do have a modern day plague going on with all the illness and disease and will this have to get worse or even wipe a lot of us out until we realise that with the right lifestyle choices and by staying active we can not only stay healthy to a ripe old age we don’t have to be a burden and can even keep on contributing.

    1. Yes this is a paradox. We “have a modern day plague going on with all the illness and disease” but at the same time we are all living longer due to the amount of medication on offer. This doesn’t bode well for quality of life, yet we seem to still champion living longer no matter what.

    2. A great point you raise here Kev, that by changing the way we think about what it means to get older, and to make different choices about the way we live, we do not have to give up on ourselves, but quite the opposite. We can continue to live a vibrant and healthy life, stay engaged in the world without having to depend on others, and remain very much a valued and respected part of society.

    3. Could it be one of the greatest diseases is, comfort? The backbreaking work that was required in our past has been replaced with automation. Today, how many people have a hard day at work, slaving over a keyboard. There are still plenty of jobs that still require a hard graft. There will always be a need for the person that fixes the machine that keeps everything running! Who will be responsible for our health when the machines stop running?

57. I remember when I was paranoid about dying and wanting to make sure I could “live forever” thinking there has to be something more. To me knowing that not only re-incarnation is part of life but also ultimately there is so much more, it takes away that drive to live forever, in the way I used to see it, and instead focus on the quality of life and in that enjoy each moment knowing the difference I can make in the world.

    1. The lie that we have all bought into is that we only have one life has given us permission to take away living responsibly and indulge in all sorts of ways. Knowing from my body (not a belief) that reincarnation is a fact and that I come back to what I leave behind has allowed for a different but much wider perspective on life, what we are here for and the bigger picture. In this sense of space, the pressure of time is factored out and so it allows for a deeper quality to be connected to which supports for a deepening foundation of living that quality.

58. We had a dog that was 24, and the last few years its life was being prolonged by drugs. It had gotten to the point where the drugs stopped working, and there was no quality of life and had to put her to sleep. Are we not doing the same with ourselves? We live in a vessel that is not built to last forever. But, as Mr Burns on the Simpsons often remarks; with enough money and modern medicine, you can live forever. How far from the truth is that statement? But what is the quality of that extended life?

    1. Great points here Steve – it is important to have the quality of life that supports us, and at the same time also honoring the process of ageing, illness and disease as this too play a role in discarding and clearing the choices we have previously made that were not so supportive – there is a blessing in illness and disease and allowing it to take its course, whilst always ensuring that we are supported lovingly through this amazing process – this is the quality that you are talking about!

59. Gone are the days when all the generations used to live together (with exception to some) and were at hand to help each other, in whatever stage of life. It could be giving birth, raising the children or getting old and dying.

60. I think there is much for us to learn and re-discover in the way that we live our lives and the impact that this has on our health and wellbeing, our quality of life, not just for ourselves but for all around us too.

61. “Our focus on a healthy and successful life being one with an ever-increasing life span needs a shift instead to the quality of life lived – not just physical health but the wellbeing of the population. ” I so agree Rebecca. Also with your point: “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.” We need to take care of the quality of our lives, not celebrate the quantity of years lived. What is the point of living to 100 if we live in a crippled body and a demented mind?

62. “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.”
    A truth we all know, yet absolutely ignore. It is why we ignore and discard such innate wisdom that needs to be explored, discussed and addressed.

    When we have our children and want all the wonderful things in life possible for them, I for one never considered them being old, or even myself being old, so instilling in them a self care and deeply regarding way of living was not on my radar. Now though it is, something that has come with not only aging, but learning to respect and care for my own body. It is this respect for our bodies that we need to build to again reclaim our elder years and to be a valued and contributing member of society

63. A very telling statistic and especially as dementia is only one in the very many illnesses and disabilities that become prevalent in older age – “with approximately 850,000 people estimated to have dementia in UK by 2015.(5) This is enough people to fill the Wembley stadium ten times over and this number is set to rise to 2,092,945 by 2051- this is more than the entire populations of Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham put together.” Three of the UK’s largest cities populated by those with this one illness, time to ask the very needed questions that are answered here in this article.

64. “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.” I wonder how many of us in our latter years wish that we had paid more attention to this when we were younger? But then perhaps its not about telling our younger generations this fact, but living by example that would really suport them to take notice. For if we live a life that is full and vibrant that keeps us feeling young and amazing, and looking great as we approach our sixties and seventies this would surely inspire young people to want to know more and to put it into practice for themselves.

65. How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old. This makes so much sense to me now that I am more aware and much more self responsible, but I can relate to not choosing to be responsible and living life not really caring about my body and the choices I was making in life. If we keep holding onto the false pretence of, it’s because I’m getting old, we will go further down the track of ignorance and worse ill health across the board.

66. It makes sense to me that there has been a huge increase in the rates of dementia because who really wants to be kept alive to such an old age when their quality of life is so low due to poor health and lack of connection and care with and from others?
    Of course one’s mind would check out and look for a mental escape from such a miserable existence. If society would understand and accept the truth about reincarnation this could help the current need to keep people alive so long at the expense of their true quality of life because they could see their dying process as merely a set up and transition to the next life.
    I love the concept of combining an elderly care facility with a young children’s care center as both these groups could support each other in so many ways.

67. We certainly need to change our way of thinking and our consciousness, for years I was part of the crowd that ate, drank, smoked, did anything we liked completely not caring or even being aware of the consequences and because there was always a crowd it seemed like a normal thing to do. Now the mates I used to hang with are all on heart pressure pills and all sorts which to them now is normal for men of our age. We need to wise up or the future does look bleak.

68. what a thought provoking post!

    love your blogs and the style of your writing! 🙂

69. “Our older generation has a wealth of knowledge and experience to share and we in turn have a duty of care to them, to provide dignity, love, connection, care and respect up until their last breath.” We tend to dismiss the elderly especially after retirement age but if they are offered a purpose there is a wealth of knowledge they can bring. One such area is our schooling system where we see children that can’t cope falling behind and giving up. Bringing our elderly into the schools especially at the reading and writing stage offers a purpose to elderly knowing they are supporting the younger generation and the over stretched education system, and the children could feel supported and offered space free of the pressures of the classroom. Dementia is a giving up on life and it can start in our school years and show up as we get older so this way we get to support both ends of the spectrum.

70. Are we really the intelligent species, with the ever increasing numbers of lifestyle diseases such as obesity, diabetes and addiction? We may be able to manage symptoms but what is the real quality of our increased lifespan?

71. Absolutely it is not how long we live but the quality in which we live throughout our entire life.

72. When we are focused on increasing life span rather than the quality that we live in we are caught in maintaining security.

73. True quality of life cannot be measured on how long we live, but on the quality Love in our heart and body.

74. It is interesting to consider the separation in society where being young is promoted and the elderly put aside as a lived life which is of less value. So we see this in people who are young, they are ignorant of the way they live their lives in relationship with their health but when they get older their health is the most important thing in the world and they allow the medical system to keep their bodies functioning to the bare minimum they find is still acceptable. How is it possible that we can be so distinct in all the cycles of our life? Could it be that in a way we live in disconnection, and more importantly irresponsible to who we are and from that choice bring to our families and societies?

75. I remember growing up and reading people say that we as a race, ought to be exterminated like vermin. This, it was put forward was self evidently the only way to deal with us and our inevitable out of control population increase. This shows so poignantly how the intelligence that got us in this mess in the first place, just proposes more abuse and would effectively like to wipe us out. Reading your account here Rebecca it’s unmistakable to me that it’s not us that are the despicable ones but the energy we choose to let through. If we stop for a moment and see the devastation we’ve caused we must start to comprehend that the time for us to change is at hand and that there’s no fix in this world that will substitute and make good for us living without connection to our heart.

76. Rebecca you have presented very sobering facts beautifully in a way that has given us all much to consider. Excellent blog thank you.

77. If as a teen I was told ….”How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.” I would have arrogantly thought “when we get old life is not worth living anyway, so put the pedal to the metal and enjoy the fun you can have in your body while it still works”. Arrogant, I know, but true none the less. I used to look at people above 25-30 years old and see they were sooo weighed down by life and it’s experiences they literally didn’t enjoy living unless there was alcohol involved.

    Lately I have had the absolute pleasure of living a full life at the age of 42 and due to the amazing elderly role models I have in my life, I am looking forward to that phase of my life as well. I feel if our youth had vibrant full role models in their later years this arrogance would not have as much weight.

78. Connection is one of the cornerstones of our lived life. Quite often as we age we can become withdrawn from society partly due to the ageing process and the effect that has on our body. We can become less mobile and the more we withdraw the greater the feelings of intensity. With connection there comes an expansiveness and greater willingness to be engaged with others and the years drop away and age is no longer such an issue.

79. “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.” It’s how we convey this to our younger generations, and that there is a responsibility that comes with how we live our lives that will really make a difference. Rather than ‘telling’ them perhaps we need to live by example, so that they have role models to inspire them to live all of who they are, rather than to conform to someone else’s ideals and beliefs.

80. It is indeed encouraging to see the increasing number of initiatives appearing on the scene to create community and independence for our ageing population. It not only offers greater human dignity in our later years but may also relieve some of the burden on our health and social care systems. But most important is the recognition that responsibility for our later years is determined by the lived quality of all our preceding ones.

81. Without a doubt, there is there so much more for us to learn about how to truly care for our bodies and what being truly responsible really means.The state of the world is the ultimate reflection of that.

82. The statistics that you share are enough to stop everyone in their tracks and ask – why is this happening and what can we do? – but unfortunately the majority of humanity are in a “state of denial”. They simply don’t know what to do so they leave the job of sorting it out to the professionals who are probably just as confused. Meanwhile we actually have the answer in our own hands; to begin to take loving care of ourselves and full responsibility for our lives. Yes, to change the world we need to start with us first.

83. How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old. This is so true and makes so much sense. If we make healthy and true choices for ourselves as best as we can through our lives, when we grow older we will have a foundation of our own loving support with us and not have a need to check out to not feel our past choices.

84. The denial of ageing and of death in society is preventing us from seeing the beauty in both of these experiences.

85. Longevity is not the marker for a successful life and until we stop trying to keep people alive at all cost and focus on the quality in which we live our lives (which is down to us) we will continue to see death as something to be avoided for as long as possible at the expense of all else.

86. This is a beautiful thought provoking sharing Rebecca. You express the need for us to value and love our elderly. Respecting and appreciating what they have to offer including their wisdom. Young or old we all have something to offer each other.

87. I was talking with a 94year old woman today who was being kept alive by weekly injections for the last few years. She told me that she had decided it was time to stop the injections, that her quality of life was diminishing and that she felt it was time to go. I loved her attitude, she said she was ready, she had spoken to her family and she felt she had about 3 weeks to go max. She was very much at ease with her decision. I look forward to spending more time with her before she passes over.

88. I can see a main reason elderly are no longer being looked after by family in their later years is due to the fact our elderly generally require a lot of support and most families have both the parents/adults in full-time work and do not have the capacity to offer the support that is required…..

89. I love the examples of bringing society and the elderly back together.

    1. And there are so many opportunities to do this… a point of inspiration for us all to consider where in our lives we could facilitate these links.

90. ” with one home in Finland giving cheaper rent to young people in the city, in return for a few hours a week spent with the residents ” I like this idea and it’s also educational in that it may inspire young people to make wiser choices in their youth.

    1. Yes this is an excellent idea, and one that brings the young and the old together in a way that supports them all.

91. A seismic shift indeed is needed in our perception of aging. Heck I can remember feeling the fear of getting through my twenties and nearing my thirties and thinking time is really starting to limit itself! This is indeed not a healthy attitude and one that reduces the overall enjoyment of life at all ages.

92. Living longer but living well is the challenge of our times. If we care for ourselves now we may be able to stay engaged in work longer and engaged in our communities more.

    1. Exactly Jenny I always wanted to life forever, yet now what I treasure most is the quality that my life will be now and in the future.

93. Old age is not about writing your self off. Old age actually represents wisdom that has come from a life of learnings and observations that can be shared with all around. The problem is our society seems to have lost its value of this wisdom as have the elderly too lost their value in themselves, and so as a result they have ‘written themselves off’ so to speak as has society. However, this is never too late to change – we can begin at any time to appreciate all that we bring with all of who we are, at any age, and this is part of the process of restoration. For how we live as young will be the offering that we can bring as we age, and this can be a very powerful reflection for everyone around. So ultimately, no matter the age, we are all role models at some point in time, the question is what kind of role model do you want to be?

94. In today’s society there is such a focus on celebrating quantity – such as age, achievements etc, but at what point did we abandon quality for quantity and where has that now left us?

95. “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old” There is an ancient and fundamental science to this, known today as ‘The Livingness’, that should be taught in all schools; how to live vitally in all aspects of life, look after yourself and give back to humanity.

96. Definitely we need to be having these conversations – I recently visited an aged care facility and it was obvious that some were very aware, wanting to engage in activities and with others there was a kind of given up look, staring into space as if the person inside simply wasn’t there. Having seen how the elderly brighten up when grandchildren are present, I agree there needs to be a mix of the generations – no longer are grandparents living with their offspring, mainly I assume because everyone is at work and there is no-one to care for them, or there simply isn’t enough space as people live in smaller homes. Whatever the reason, and however it can be arranged, our elders still have a lot to offer and should never be sidelined.

97. if we are all going to be living for longer, then how we are living will need to be addressed, because it simply cannot be the case that we live longer in deeper states of illness and disease, if we are going to extend life, then let’s make it worth extending through true purpose, love and brotherhood.

98. I don’t think I want to live much beyond 80. Why resist the inevitable?

99. “…How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old…” yes, and there are always opportunities to introduce self-care and love into our lives that offer a ‘U-turn’ in our health and wellbeing.

100. As the body becomes more frail with age it becomes more obvious that we need to take great care and honour our preciousness, vulnerability and fragility as well as our strength and determination. In fact being able to accept ourselves, as we are, in our elder years is crucial to how we are able to live a full and enjoyable life…..appreciation the next step.

101. Having a society that values and appreciates old age, where the wisdom that each person has can feed back into the community is not only inspiring it is the only true way forward.

     1. And it is only in coming to truly value what can be represented by our elder community – namely true wisdom from lived experience that is not greater than the young but an equally important part, will we begin to live in a way that will sustain us for our whole lives

102. It is interesting to consider why research into the prevention rather than the cure, is not more fully invested in for many of our modern day illnesses and disorders.

103. How long does a can opener last? Have you ever used a pencil to its end? Our body is like everything that is created, it has a shelf life and just because something is old doesn’t make it fit for purpose. When something including us is well taken care of, there is always a use, need and purpose. Duct tape can fix just about anything to get more life out of it! What if age lengthening methods for us looked like duct tape? We would look like a mummy.

104. If we consider that we often over ride what is caring for the body when we are younger because it is robust, it is not surprising that we may have more conditions to live with as we age. Medicine offers a lot to us in terms of treating many symptoms, however we have the possibility of living well if our lifestyles were more caring of our bodies.

     1. Exactly jennym. It’s never too late to take responsibility for our health and well-being and the quality with which we walk this Earth.

105. I love the inter-generational care concept. What a great support for young and old, and a great opportunity for each to reflect something to the other.

106. Living to the fullest, to the end… and in the quality that is needed for every step and stage is what we can bring when we stay committed to life.

     1. This feels so true Jenny – it’s about the quality of each and every moment.

     2. Living less leads us towards the comfort that may keep us settled for a while but the yearning to ask the BIG question – what is life all about resurfaces sooner or later.

107. Our elderly suffer a lot from loneliness. Our natural way of being is living together, connect and interact. There are ways to create a situation that all benefit from, the wisdom our elderlies have gained from living their life is worth sharing with others.

108. The way we live has an impact on everything. Every choice, whether it is about food, movement, expression or thoughts, has its consequences on our body, on the way we work and interact. Most people don’t like me sharing about this and on how many of our discomforts and illnesses are the result from our own lifestyle choices.

109. ‘Dementia along with so many of the other illnesses and diseases carries a human toll, not only at the point of death of the ones suffering, but in their reduced quality of life and the distress caused to family and friends, and even to the carers and medical staff.’
     True and very important to take the whole picture into consideration, not only the people that have an illness, but the whole range of people that are affected by it. As a close relative of mine always shares: my mum had MS, but actually our entire family had it.

110. The body is a part of the law of cause and effect, but also subject to Newtons gift to us that every force has an equal and opposite force. Meaning how we move our body comes back to us. Always a sobering thought for me when I ponder on my movements over recent days or weeks.

111. “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.” This seems such an obvious statement, but we pay little attention to this as a human race.

112. The more we push on and ignore what our bodies are showing us and rely on medicine to keep us going then sure we will be living longer but really what is the quality of those lives that we are living. This is actually a really significant question that each and every single one of us needs to ponder on. Do we continue to ignore what our bodies are telling us or do we stop and look deeper at what is being presented to us so we can make sure we don’t make the same choices in the future.

113. What if we were to focus on expanding and embodying our awareness and quality of life rather than our lifespan?

114. Our health reflects the choices we have made in the past and the saying is that these things do catch up with you at some point. It is time for us to acknowledge this and be willing to take responsibility for this, but know that we are never alone to do this as true support is around the moment we are actually willing to step in and live life with more love than before.

115. Just because we can live longer does not mean that the quality of our life is increased. The question is which is more important to you?

116. It seems a little strange that we have fallen into the trap of prolonging life no matter what. It is impossible to stay in this current body forever, the end is inevitable. Better to go naturally at the end of your life than hanging on in there doped up on drugs or enduring endless operations or medical intervention.

117. The way we choose to live is the answer to the rapidly increasing disease rate, not technology and the ever improving medical research. We can turn this around if every one starts to bring back the responsibility of their health to themselves. If we go out in the cold without a coat we will catch a cold or get flu, smoke chances are you get lung or many other cancers or heart attack, drink alcohol and get any number of alcohol related illnesses, it really isn’t rocket science so maybe we really need to look at why we do all these things to ourselves that cause harm and make us feel bad. If we are to live longer lets make it a joyful experience and not a struggle in poor health.

118. It is a totally different way of living to live totally present and with and in the natural order and harmony of our bodies and life.

119. What if the human life span as we have known it to be for centuries, is actually a result of how we, as a collective human race, have been living. And what if – if we were to live in natural accordance to what our bodies actually can do, our life spans would be significantly different?

120. Are we going to continue to champion living longer whilst ignoring the fact that we are living poorer lives? Poorer in every sense of the word meaning a reduced quality that is far less than what we are capable of and what could easily be natural for us.

121. I have never been able to make sense of our population growth and life expectancy. If I think about it in a linear way it doesn’t make sense, and everything is totally unsustainable. But living from my inner wisdom I naturally know that everything, first and foremost, is about quality and energetic integrity, and with this, everything makes sense and we can lead full and purposeful lives that lead us to evolve … out of here.

122. Ageing is such a massive topic for almost everyone – it seems like nobody wants to age, but I wonder if this is based on 2 factors:

     a.) we know we haven’t made the most of our younger years – we haven’t given life one billion percent
     b.) we’ve not made the greatest choices and so we know our bodies will suffer the consequences as we get older

     Just a thought, because I know the more I commit and give life everything, and the more I care for myself and my body the more I enjoy that I am getting older (and wiser).

     1. I agree with you Meg. When we live responsibly in full, every second is lived with purpose and there is nothing to be missed when ageing, as everything that was there to be lived has been lived when the time arrived

123. I agree that we need to look at the way we are living at all ages. The poor health of the elderly merely represents the accumulation of what we are all doing in our younger years. I feel the belief that it is normal to be unwell as you age is extremely disempowering, as it makes us take a passive role in our health and not question if there’s something we can change. There is also the lack of care for and discarding of older people by society to consider and change.

124. It’s very likely that life span will keep increasing as this is used as a measure of many things in our society, from a version of health, right through to the so-called ‘success’ of the medical system. Yet age clearly does not determine whether a life is truly well lived with vitality, loving relationships, and purpose.

125. Exactly… The way we live now will directly reflect upon our life in our elder years… The fact that this is ignored so blatantly is an extraordinary reflection upon humanity’s singular lack of awareness of a bigger picture in life.

     1. I agree – it seems common sense to me that the way we live now will directly impact our bodies as we continue to grow older, yet it seems like everyone lives thinking they are the exception to this rule.

126. A great shift is definitely needed to how we live and how we see old age and the true honouring of ourselves in our lives and others. The older I am getting the more I am seeing the responsibility we hold for ourselves our health and the participation in life with the wisdom we gather with a steadiness understanding and the importance of not giving up .

127. The quality that we are living gives it away, our aged are living longer but with dementia in numbers unprecedented. It is not something to aspire to but rather to address.

128. Along side this we are getting younger sicker people too. I see people under 65, in fact a lot between 55 and 65 that are dying and there is limited to no support for them, unless they are in hospital or they have a network of family and friends to take care of them. Actually aged doesn’t really come into it any more, our health is worsening and our health care systems are really struggling under the weight of our deteriorating health. Most people do not consider how they will take care for themselves when they are unable to care for themselves. Some don’t even want to have those conversations.

129. The simple answer is we get older, but are we really getting any wiser?

130. Is it not the quality of life that is important, rather than keeping people alive regardless of their state of health? So much emphasis is put on the latter, but how much integrity is involved here?

131. We keep congratulating ourselves for bigger and more. Achievements such as taller buildings, quicker downloads, bigger produce, more powerful engines and living longer are celebrated. Yet we are not looking at the actual quality of life humanity is living.

132. We are in serious trouble with our health. It is costing us more than governments can afford and yet not necessarily admit. The fact that we are an ageing population with declining health and wellbeing is telling us something about current approaches to management.

133. There are certainly moves to start making people look at ways to take responsibility for their health. My observations just in the work place are that people know what to do, but don’t feel it is a priority. We tend to put work and others at the top of our lists and our own health and well being is much lower down.

134. Perhaps we need to educate ourselves from a young age to understand the ageing process and respect and appreciate our ageing population as having something to offer! If we looked at ageing as a natural event which it is, and that we are all worthy of our place here on earth till it is our time to pass. With the knowledge of reincarnation maybe this will be the way of the future.

135. It is super inspiring when you see elders who are fully engaged in life, vibrant, contributing and wanting to give back and share their wisdom. In life we champion success and motion- constantly striving for the next thing often disregarding the quality of our lives. When we bring focus to this, that is where the true changes can happen.

136. A great article. Our elder years are constantly becoming an experience of pain, illness and loss of cognitive function. Is this truly how we ever envisioned our lives to be? Is it not up to us to look deeply at how we live now, before we find ourselves in the throes of illness.

137. ‘A UK study has estimated that the health and social care costs for dementia almost match the combined costs of cancer, heart disease and stroke(6)’ This is staggering when you allow yourself to feel the magnitude of this. Then add to this that the medical profession do not have any real understanding of preventing dementia or its cause and that diagnoses are being made in younger and younger people.

138. It is a big social problem how to take care for the demented eldery people. To have your parents in your house while suffering dementia is not so easy. As many times you can not leave them alone in a house as they do things which can be dangerous. So if you work you have a problem how to arrange that.
     For sure we have to focus on how and why are so many elderly suffering dementia.
     You see the drifting away, they don’t rcognize their famiy etc.
     We all drift more away in life not open to see in which miserable state humanity is in. We drift a way in comfort without seeing others anymore, what happens to them. Can we see here a pattern?
     Is it how we end if we live that pattern for long?
     Is this the key for change?

     1. There is much to indicate in the way we are living isn’t supporting us in the long term. Relying more and more on external stimulation and keeping our true selves more and more hidden, withdrawn and protected within has to take its toll on our willingness to participate and communicate in fullness in world.

     2. thanks for sharing this Sylvia. You bring home the practical issues of dealing with elderly relatives who may have dementia, and how the pattern of drifting away can start very early.

139. I am pretty sure the strain will increase and as happens now, extra money will continue to be pumped into the system to cope with winter stresses until we start to turn things around by looking at how we are living. Locally we have a GP service that has come to a grinding halt, most GP’s have left and one GP is trying to look after thousands of patients. They have had to admit they cannot continue to maintain their present service. Whilst the system needs to change as well, the way forward for us can be to have more self-care and responsibility for our own health.

140. Self-care is medicine for the future of our public health system.

141. If the population continues to grow as the statistics predict, this raises the importance of how self care is a significant and key component for developing public health strategies for our future health care system. Self care being taking responsibility of staying vital, healthy and being proactive in health measures instead of overriding issues and leaving it for ‘later’ to someone else to attend to.

142. Our health systems internationally are very clearly sinking under the weight of our current levels of illness and disease. I work in palliative care and our patient numbers are expected to increase by 300% in the next five years, which really is something that I can’t fathom, but also in honesty is something that is going to be very difficult to support. But this is not the only area. Every area in healthcare would be experiencing the same kind of increases. It is clear that how we are choosing to live is resulting in the vast majority of what we are seeing in health care. There is much that can be done to change this, but we cannot approach it in the way that has resulted in this in the first instance. We do need to step back and see exactly where we are at and what has been created and without reaction or a need to fix move forward. However it will take everyone to play their part as we are all responsible for our own choices.

143. “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.” This is such a great point, but one that is so overlooked when we are young. It would be very interesting to track someones life who started out as a young vibrant and fully engaged person in the world, but who over the years checked out as life took its toll and who then ended up in a care home with the needs of someone with dementia. And then to do the same with someone with similar circumstances, but who chose to take great care of themselves and learnt to not let life control them but remained fully engaged and interactive with the world until their 80’s. It could potentially be a model for health education for children from a young age.

144. Something I find interesting is how we maybe extending human life, but we do not look at what is really happening to these older people who are living longer, many become seriously isolated and alone, we place them in aged care and leave them to it, we do not have older people supporting society, they are assigned to the rubbish tip, waiting for death to come along. I have heard may older people say, “I am invisible” how is it that their lives are extended but they have no purpose. As a society we could really do with reassessing how we value and involve older people in daily life, there is wisdom and experience that they could share that is often ignored and not utilised.

145. How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old. It just makes sense because you can’t keep abusing something and not expect that down the track you will be left with the end result of that choice. The body is amazing but cannot rescue us when our abuse is too extreme, and should not either as these stops when health is affected can be exactly what is needed for us.

146. If we want to change the quality of our elder years we need to be honest about the choices we are making.

147. An amazing sharing on the importance and necessity of the quality of how we live and the effect this has on our health, well being old age and the ripple effects on everyone we know and ultimately the whole world by our reflection. Very beautiful and empowering to truly love and care for ourselves.

148. We put a lot of effort into the early years, but not the latter years, it doesn’t really make sense when we consider life as cycles repeating, how we end life is as important as how we grow.

     1. Yes and these cycles return again and again for us to learn.

149. Many societies honour their elders for the wisdom they bring. Most industrial nations discard them as used up husks with the payback for their services are the drugs that allow them just to exist.

150. it feels unnatural to decide that once a person has reached a certain age or condition that we are far more likely to remove them from family, and thus society. This exacerbates the situation by alienating the elderly at a point in their lives when they would be far better staying engaged in the daily goings on and continuing to contribute all that they are and experience they have lived.

151. ‘Just as we all want our children to grow up to have successful careers and relationships, would we not equally want them to grow up and have a respectful, active and joyful old age?’ Staying engaged in and with life – no matter our age.

152. It seems we celebrate the numbers of years lived and not the quality of those years lived.

     1. That is something i have recently appreciated when it comes to the end of a year or my birthday – not just celebrating another year older, but reflecting on the year I just lived and how i have grown or changed or evolved in that time.

        1. And what a great foundation for a joyful active old age you are setting Rebecca.

153. Yes I agree, a shift in how we perceive life is essential “Our focus on a healthy and successful life being one with an ever-increasing life span needs a shift instead to the quality of life lived…” why has it become a sign that we are doing well because people are surviving longer,,,surviving being the word, not flourishing. It is all about quality not quantity…obviously it is great to have full life and rich old age, but not just to lengthen it for the sake of function and survival.

     1. In my recent studies for philosophy, I was reading about one philosopher who felt that our focus should not be on our idenity or even much on our experience of life, simply on if we survive or not. This attachment to survival at all costs is interesting because it leaves us open to accepting very low levels of life quality

154. The statistics are hard to compute, visualising the entire population of 3 major British cities makes it slightly easier but nonetheless it is hard to imagine and it begs the question as to why we are not doing more to truly understand what is going on for the scale of this rapid deterioration to occur?

155. We talk about getting older as something negative, something to dread and although it is true that the physical body starts to breakdown and deteriorate our inner world can continue to expand through life and if this was how we each lived from a young age our outlook on life would be entirely different.

156. it will surely only be when humanity understands the energetic interplay of all things, how reincarnation is a given, that this absurd relationship that we have with life and death will start to evolve.

157. With all the modern medical advances we walked out of the cave into the light! How many of these advanced procedures just allow us to live longer, well past the time, that our choices we have made that would have finished us off a whole lot sooner?

158. “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.”

     As a humanity we would do well to heed these words and take more responsibility for the part we each play in the evolution of us all.

159. “Our older generation has a wealth of knowledge and experience to share and we in turn have a duty of care to them, to provide dignity, love, connection, care and respect up until their last breath.” I agree, they are our elders who have walked a little further than us with much wisdom to share, we need to respect them for this as we would like to be respected when we finally get to this point in our lives.

160. If having a longer life span means sitting around in an old folks home or being left in a house all day with only the TV for company, I personally would not want it. If the quality of life is not there then I couldn’t think of anything worse. The current situation we have with our elderly does not paint a pretty picture, so it makes sense to build the quality whilst we are younger, which is a huge investment in our elder years.

161. The way forward of taking more responsibility for our own choices can actually be a way back to reconnecting to living our true inner essence of our being.

     1. Absolutely Jenny, we cannot rely on the younger generation to look after us and pay for our ill choices. We have to be responsible for our own health at every stage of our lives and not let it build up out of control in our latter years. When we live our lives connected to our inner being, we naturally cherish and nurture our body.

162. When we look at the numbers it is obvious the dire straits that we are in. So what is left? Learning to live life in true quality, aligned to the essence of our being, the soul, is our only and most glorious way forward.

163. From me it always comes back to the quality of life and what we are choosing and how this reflected in our bodies. If we don’t feel great and there is stuff going on then this is down to the quality in which I have been choosing to live. Taking responsibility for this has at times been hard but worth every second because less and less know do I accept anything that is not of Love.

164. People are so obsessed by the longevity rather than the true quality of life.

     1. I choose true quality over longevity and to do my best to bring this to the elderly.

165. The statistics here are very frightening and are we all going to sit back and watch health systems implode or start making different lifestyle choices. So many people are heading for really miserable latter years, because of being stuck in cycles of self abuse. What is the real point of living longer if those extended years are miserable and in poor health?

166. It’s interesting that the life span has been our focus with little attention paid to the quality of life lived. It is quite indicative of a society that wants results, to get things done and to achieve. But what are we really achieving?

     1. In the extreme push for results we overlook our humanity.

167. Life is a preparation for death, but if we see death as an end rather than a beginning, then we can loose sight of the fact that each step matters, each choice matters – not just for us but for everyone else too!

168. It seems we may have lost our focus as a society where we pride ourselves in how old we can get, celebrating getting past the 90 or 100 years without really stopping to look at the quality that we are all responsible for with how the elderly are and how they are looked after. What is there to celebrate in the numbers of age of a person if they are unwell, have multiple conditions, are on multiple medications, have to be in full time care of a team of medics etc and are not embraced as part of our families and instead are delegated to homes and left to themselves etc. I don’t mean this in a judgemental way, for either us as a society nor for the elderly in living longer but in poor health, for I value the elderly and the qualities they bring as well as their life experience which is valuable to us all to learn from. The elderly in our society can be such a rich well of wisdom. But how can we bring back this value of life and treasure it for what it is and what it brings, whilst supporting the elderly to keep bringing this wisdom and not shut down just because they are old? This question exposes how we are all responsible for how things are today, and how we all can play a part in true change.

169. I know I am going to die one day but it is my responsibility from now on (and always has been) until that day that will determine the outcome. To accept that I am going to die and to make the necessary changes that will support me especially through my later years is essential. I cannot ignore death no matter what age I am as the preparation began in my thirties and will continue until my passing over.

170. It’s a dire picture you paint Rebecca of where we are headed as a populace. If we do not take responsibility for ourselves and our own healing throughout life, then our old age will reflect that neglect and disregard and our irresponsibility will become a collective responsibility to shoulder the burden on our health care systems and aged care facilities.

171. What I am observing in the Aged Care Place I work is that many of the residents are 80 plus and quite immobile, many very overweight and need to be moved on special lifters to get them in and out of bed, showered and then put in a wheelchair for the morning, then back up in the lifter at pad change after lunch and then again when changed for bed very early evening. They are kept alive on 6 meals a day, which is mainly full of sugar, dairy, wheat, carbohydrates (plus the extra lollies and cakes and snacks they have in their room), coffee, tea and medication 3 times a day, with anything up to 10 pills each time and TV. I am considering that their quality of life may not be that great!!

172. I feel the time will come…(probably has come already)…when we have to review our relationship with and expectations of social services and see that their true purpose is to support us all with our responsibilities rather than take responsibility for us. In a truly healthy society, would we not take responsibility for our elderly just as we do for our young? In a truly healthy community, would we not work together to support the elderly rather than see them all put into homes? This is a massive question Rebecca and thanks for raising it.

173. When I was younger and I was quite reckless, I never once thought about how my actions would then affect my ageing process or the fact that my loved ones may end up having to take care of me due to my lifestyle choices. In retrospect, the way I acted was very self focused. At what point I wonder will quality of life be considered rather than quantity? We don’t want to live forever as shells of our former selves surely? Well I know that I don’t want that.
     I find these types of articles so interesting and I really respect the fact that you are bringing this awareness of what is happening in our life span, out to the world.

174. If we look at the quality of mental health, statistics would suggest that many people are experiencing and living with chronic levels of depression and anxiety. Yet we do not seem to be ready to look at the way we are living or the quality of how we hold ourselves in life.

175. Growing older offers the opportunity of time to learn, to heal, to develop and evolve. Whether we take advantage of that offering is the question at hand.

176. I love the Finnish idea of the young living with the old… What I also feel is that once humanity truly understands recognizes and appreciates the eternal truths that we will keep reincarnating, then this will reconfigure totally our relationship with the ongoing trend to artificially extend life.

     1. So do I, I have always loved to observe countries where the grandparents care for the children whilst the parents work and families live together amongst the community raising children together.

        1. There really does need to be a return to what true community is about… But for this to take place, the paradigm shift that is required is enormous and will be felt through every level of society… And of course it is inevitable.

177. An issue being raised in medicine and the news at the moment is why we aren’t living LONGER, and it’s interesting that we’re paying so much attention to life-span as opposed to life-quality. What could be said if we were to address the latter?

178. We may be living longer but in what quality? This blog is great at challenging this very statement, as it is the marker of a sick population of younger and younger people are multi-symptomatic.

179. Checking out in earlier years will just bring forward the (so-called) elderly diseases to younger and younger years.

180. We really need to consider the quality that we continue to live in rather than living checked out or not able to engage in life.

181. I do remember thinking when I was young that I could worry about old age when I was older and just have some fun. I now understand we get away with nothing, and my body carries the abuse I did then and this feels to be the problem we have now that people are not looking after themselves as they age, and the system is completely overloaded. But as we can be kept alive for longer, with medication, we are not living our potential, we are living longevity in ill health.

182. I find it very interesting that we are calculating our success by the length of life someone has and not its quality. If we look at the way people die, their physical condition and true quality of life, this would be a true reflection of the state we are in as a humanity.

     1. Longevity feels like a lazy measure of ‘success’. As you say Samantha, quality of life is a more truthful reflection.

     2. I agree Samantha – we are comparing to less developed countries and ages past where lack of sanitation and medical understanding lead to very short lifespans – however, we now have these things, and therefore life can not only be long but has the potential to be of a very high quality, and yet the experience is often not the case

183. We seem to have more attention on the quantity (of years) rather than the quality…

     1. Yes people champion living longer but ignore the quality of their life.

184. I remember when I was younger being more reckless with my health and wellbeing and seeing old age as something way off in the future that I would worry about later. It is this kind of attitude that we need to change so that we are all living in a way here and now that prepares us for later in life so that we don’t become a multi-symptomatic health statistic that places a drain on the system and society. Surely this is the most responsible way to live?

185. Aging can be a joyful vital experience if we care for and nurture ourselves rather than it being the inevitable that will come upon us with a host of problems and ailments.

186. If we have preventable lifestyle related illness and disease crippling our healthcare systems, then what exactly is or has our healthcare become? Is it really truly healthcare anymore, or has it become all about choice management instead?

187. Great article Rebecca, and I agree entirely with all you have shared, the numbers are pointing out something needs to change. Digging deeper we may find a way that can bring about changes for those who choose to understand there is a different way and to search for answers that are outside the box.
     So what has changed other than the medical intervention, which is amazing?
     Could it be as a society we check out and now even young children as well as adults are addicted to a screen?
     So the commitment of the older generation of the past has been lost and en masse we are checking out in front of a screen. Could it be this is adding to almost if not all of the modern day diseases that have proliferating to plague proportions?
     When people lived and worked for a true purpose and commitment to their family and community so they were healthy and vital usually to their last breath, unless they died early from a childhood disease or war.
     So maybe the answer lies in not checking out?
     Then when we look at the Roseto-effect on one disease they shared a base that brought people together, which was very much pre-screen so for more on this go to;
     http://www.unimedliving.com/living-medicine/illness-and-disease/the-roseto-effect-a-lesson-on-the-true-cause-of-heart-disease.html
     “While living in the town to conduct the study however, the researchers observed several major differences as to how the Rosetans related to others in their community. They noticed a remarkably close-knit social pattern that was cohesive and mutually supportive with strong family and community ties, where the elderly in particular were not marginalised, but revered. Put simply, the Rosetans lived in brotherhood with one another.”

188. You would think ageing was an ‘avoidable curse’ based on the amount of money we as a society spend on anti-ageing cosmetics, television, books and so forth, but in fact it is a natural process.

     1. So true Susie, it is also the same as people try and postpone their death when it is inevitable. Death is also a natural process and can be an experience that is confirming of how we have lived.

189. Aging is a part of life, and if we don’t value our end of life phase, its like the state we find ourselves in as we age, becomes a crescendo of how we have lived. Just because we’re living longer, is not necessarily a real success, because if our quality of life is one of being sick, in a nursing home where we are bedridden, or suffering dementia and hip surgery, living isolated, feeling lonely, and so forth – this is an extension of life but not quality. Quality – the elderly are held in value by their whole community and shared cared for.

190. As a society, we need to shift our perception from quantity to ‘quality’ – bring quality into our lives as a value. When we make it about quality then it is all encompassing – its about our health, our lifestyle, our relationships and we begin to understand that quality = community, working all together which can bring a true state of health for us all – not just our physical wellbeing, but all aspect of us.

191. We are living longer, sure – but what is the quality of that life?

192. We have a saying ‘quality, not quantity’. A life without quality is what I can now only describe as painful. Our body is very quick to remind us of this fact.

193. What we put into our body, our system has to come out, there is no other way. That can be food, emotions , physical exercise – everything contributes to the end result . .. When we nurture and take care of ourselves, ageing gracefully is a real possibility.

194. Aging and the illnesses and diseases that we often must confront are all a natural part of the body allowing a level of healing and shedding of that which is not needed. If we continue to see illness and aging as a problem, then we will not have access to the healing offered in it.

195. Age and aging is a natural process, but sadly we have come to celebrate the number of years one has lived, rather than look at the quality one is living in and with. This is a key factor in life and death. So many of our elderly are on polypharmacy (multiple chemical medicinal drugs) and have multiple medical conditions, and are in nursing homes as they cannot live independently and often to the point where they require constant medical surveillance …and yet we celebrate that they have made it to 98 or 100 years old. To me this does not make sense. Aging can be celebrated, but what if we were to bring back quality of life, care and love into this even if it meant a ‘shorter’ life span of say 70-80 years old? I don’t mean this in a harsh way, I am simply considering myself and so many others I have heard say that they want to age gracefully and pass over gracefully too.

     1. I’d agree Henrietta, I rather die a vital and healthy 70/75 year old than living to my 90’s / 100 with those remaining 5/10 years in misery with multiple diseases.

     2. I agree – I would rather live a full life of love and vitality than a prolonged one of lesser quality. I have often read that it is a persons quality of life they remember and regret not giving more time to when they die – it is not the number of years, the money or physical success they look back on, but how much they lived and loved and how much they let things outside of them dictate who they where in life.

196. We seem to pat ourselves on the back as a society with our increase in life span. We even compare to other countries whose life span isn’t as great as ours and they are classed as somehow less evolved. But what have we increased – life or existence? If we make how we are living the focus we may get a sharp shock. We might like that so we stick with the patting on the back with blinkers on.

     1. I would rather live a short life full of love than a prolonged existence void of it.

        1. Me too, for me filling up on drugs to keep me alive really isn’t being kept alive at all, it would be like living in purgatory.

        2. Hear hear. Without love, what is the point?

        3. For those amongst us who choose to live in withdrawal from the love we are, the point is exactly that – to avoid love at all costs and in so doing immerse ourselves in a way of living that promises security, person gratification, seeming comfort and an escape from the burning pain that comes with not living true to our true selves, our Soul. When this way of life becomes more familiar than the loving life lived from our inner-most, it can at first seem overwhelming to dig ourselves out of the pit of all we have created that is not true to such love.

197. ‘We cannot solely focus on the older population to solve the issues it faces’ – How true, true quality in age care needs to be built by awareness, not after we got older, but already as young, so that we are well prepared for it but also already as young take responsibility for what we contribute to the whole, and knowing that we, so to speak, are laying the bed we ourselves will sleep in when we get older.

198. Of course, as we age, we may be more likely to need medical intervention of some sort because there are areas where we have not looked after ourselves as well as we could have. But rather than becoming completely dependant on the GP to make us better, this can actually be a time to turn around how we care for ourselves. We can learn and change how we care for our bodies by listening to the messages we are given. It may be that we can type more gently so not to irritate painful arthritic finger joints, or walk in connection with the body to not jar a degenerative knee joint.

     1. This is so true Gill, there is always something we can do for ourselves, even in the slightest of movements. I know from my own experience that depending on how hard or heavy footed I walk will register in my feet, which may result in being painful or if I walk up the stairs feeling my body it gets easier, and my legs feel more able to support the movements required. What I have come to realise is to not under estimate how powerful the simple little changes can be.

     2. I agree Gill, it is never to late too make changes to how we live and accept responsibility for the end result of our choices thus far.

199. We are a curious species! We think up ways to shorten our lives and at the same time to increase our body’s longevity? We are living in a disposable world. The ecology of the planet’s oceans is in danger from everything plastic. Has our body just become another disposable item to use, abuse and then just get a new one by science or reincarnation?

200. Observing someone decline with dementia is a very difficult path in life, so the toll of this disease is so much greater than the person with the illness. It affects the entire family and community around the person.

201. What an inspiring blog for life revaluation for us all young and old and the real conservation that needs to be discussed . The facts and figures of our health and our sad ageing illnesses say it all to where we are currently heading and a complete reversal back to true quality of life needs to be readdressed, truth with real quality and love as the forefront of this.

202. The cost implications are so vast if the current trend of increasing longevity into failing health continues Rebecca. We have to consider the quality of life we are living and understand it is our responsibility to maintain our own health to the best of our ability whatever age we are. We simply cannot just continue running to the doctor to get mended when we are not also looking at the reasons for our ill health or making some life changes.

203. That is a big difference!

204. The life span is still increasing in many countries but in Australia and others the female life expectancy is increasing but not the years lived in good health. We are able to keep people in ill health alive for longer.

     1. Great point – wouldn’t it be better if we all learnt to increase the years of good health and not chase a longer life at any cost.

205. Retirement feels so purposeless and empty. I understand how the work may need to change to suit one’s physical health and situation. But whether it’s voluntary or otherwise,the feeling of contributing all that one has learnt throughout one’s life, valuing and expressing that until the end feels so confirming of life and all that one is.

206. It seems that we value a longer life now more than the quality of that life we are living in our later years. Furthermore as we live longer we have created this new dimension of life called retirement where we should be rewarded for the years of working and contributing to society. When in reality our withdrawal to purely recreational activities seems a distortion of our natural impulse to engage with life and people.

207. This is a very important discussion. How are we going to care for our elderly as the elderly population increases and as they become more frail? We are also seeing a large number of people who are not elderly. They are in the middle age group, so they don’t qualify for age care services and they are requiring similar services, but unfortunately they don’t exist, certainly where I live in Australia. This is especially so in the area of palliative care. There is a lacking of services for people who want to stay at home, but are unable to care for themselves and are not imminently dying. These innovative ideas, that involve the whole community are the only way forward, because governments will have no money to pay for what is coming.

208. Our focus has become about what we ‘do’ in life, not the quality in which we live. It is not what we do every day that is what matters, it is the quality in which we live, how we are with each other and definitely ourselves.

209. The way the elderly are separated from society is a sad image of the state of affairs – it is also a grim reality that many of us as individuals are getting more and more lonely, we may have loads of ‘friends’ on social media but when all come to all, not really anyone we can truly connect with in person.

210. Our lifestyle choices really do make a difference and I agree that healing the epidemic of dementia is something that needs to include people of all ages.

211. I ask myself the question of whether I would prefer less years and more quality of life or vice versa and my understanding is that if I live life to my full potential then I will gladly go onto the next phase willing and open. But if I’m not living life to the fullest I may want to end a painful, joyless existence, or want to persevere to try to make up for lost time – either way it’s not pretty. So best be responsible now for how I am in my old age, should I get there, is how I live each day now.

212. The examples offered in this article are immensely disturbing – are we, the people, really aware of these facts? And if so, what are we as individuals doing about it?

213. The Nursing Home you mentioned where young students live in and care for the Elderly while they re there is a fantastic idea. There is a real need for us in society to see that there are things that connect us beyond generations, and each generation doesn’t have to relate to the other in a way that is condescending or imposing – it is possible to have true understanding and connection.

214. Where there is disharmony in our lives it exposes the disharmony within ourselves and this no doubt has an impact on our wellbeing. The trouble is we don’t think there is a link and then if left the consequences of our choices catch up with us later on in life if not before.

215. The truth is that these days we are living longer as an older person than we have as a youthful person. The media has worked hard to kill the incentive, purpose and wisdom of those who have aged by basically doing what those old science-fiction horror movies portrayed when they were killing off everyone over a certain age. Can’t have people valued for their learned experience so best paint them as ‘has beens ‘and focus on the body beautiful of youth.

216. ‘What can we do?’ – A question highly relevant for everyone of us, no matter our age or societal status. We need to open our eyes and look honestly at what we in truth contribute to the whole.

217. I’ve seen footage of young children interacting with the elderly in a care home. It is adorable and would melt anyone’s heart to see. The joy of both the generations is so beautiful. At the end of a life span life can seem bleak but these children remind the older people that life is ongoing. The sparkle that’s re-ignited in the eyes of the elderly and the children glowing under their appreciation for who they are is glorious.

     1. At the end of a life span life can seem bleak but these children remind the older people that life is ongoing.’ – How true, it’s a reflection of a forever ongoing cycle that we are all part of.

     2. It is so important to feel involved and committed to our last breath – allowing the elderly to interact and take part in the raising of children as just one example allows them to stay committed to the end rather than passing over given up because the world has left them behind.

218. We tend to hide from things we don’t understand or think we can face. But everything points towards a huge change taking place in the average age of us as a race. The only people I have heard talk about this as an issue till now have suggested gennocide and the culling of my fellow brothers. To me the elephant in the room is the isolated way we are with one another. If we were to work together wouldn’t it be possible to find a new way forward? And what if this was also key in turning around our bad health? For your words Rebecca remind me we are not designed to live alone, or stick our head in the sand. We are here to live and breathe knowing we are all one.

219. “The average life expectancy of humans is increasing at an unprecedented rate. Seen as one of the great achievements of the century, ”
     This maybe the case but to me when I go to visit my at local hospital I feel it is not an achievement at all. I see people that are old and frail and not capable of looking after them selves and yet we insist on keeping them alive by using drugs and artificial means etc. When years ago they would have just died naturally. It’s as though we have become obsessed with living and terrified of dying.

     1. There is definitely something in this Mary, “It’s as though we have become obsessed with living and terrified of dying.” It would be interesting to see what would happen if our GPs, surgeons, nurses and care staff (and all of us!), began to understand death as a part of a life completed, that there is a natural end when ‘the job is done’. I would bet that the need to prolong life or avoid death, would be replaced with a form of care that prepared us for the next cycle of life.

220. Love the idea with elderly people and children sharing space.

     1. It is amazing to see how majority of elderly people light up in the company of children, and the natural connection and communication they have.

221. I love how you point out that the social nature of humans is to connect and interact – this is our innate nature and it does not come with an expiry date. It goes without saying that the elderly need to be included in our society.

     1. I agree Eva, we cannot ignore the nautral essance of who we are

222. Reading this, if we don’t begin to make changes to support what is coming things are going to get very intense.

     1. Yes, much more intense than they already are. And if we do not address the lack of connection we are fostering in our young we’re not going to have a generation that is equipped to cope with this growing level of intensity. Technology is being used to dull out reality and focus on virtual ones. Social interaction is reduced by being funnelled into interactions based on specific games or online shows. Real life connections people once learned and grow from are not being nurtured. Instead people are learning to check out younger which doesn’t bode well for dementia statistics.

223. It makes real sense for us all to look at the way we are living and the quality of our lives, from when we are young. Only by taking responsibility for our health will we maintain our fitness and vitality for when we are older. It is never too early to start, or never too late to make a change either.

224. We tend to ignore ageing, ignore what we do to our bodies that accelerates ageing, pretend we are never going to die. As mentioned these need to be dinner table topics to bring a deeper awareness of where we are headed.Getting by in an unwell state with an expectation of and desire for a quantity years rather than preparing for the quality of those years as we age seems to me to be no life at all really, rather an existence.

225. The question I love about this is that it raises the topic of quality. In society we almost always put “more” ahead of quality. In a recent business example a company working in our sector has grown very big very fast. When I met with the teams behind this it is clear that they grew large but did not grow with the quality that they could have and so the result is a business that makes lots of money, but also one that is void of love. Perhaps the same thing applies to our lifespan, if we make life about quality then maybe we will find a natural age at which the body breaks down.

226. To learn that one ill health condition such as dementia in its many variants alone can bankrupt a health system, is a very sobering insight. And that does not even take cancer, diabetes and obesity into account. It is difficult to imagine how, as a society, we will be able to cope with these ever-escalating, i.e. worsening health statistics.

     1. I agree Gabriel – there is a whole career you can take up in health care economics which is the process of trying to figure out how to manage the finances of health care systems in developed and developing countries, battling back the tide of ever increasing illness.

     2. The issue with the rising rates of illness such as dementia, diabetes etc along side the cost to society is that of the cost to families and networks when there are those in the family requiring full time care. Carers already save the governments all around the world an enormous amount of money. But they do very often have to give up work so they can be a carer, which would also be another blow to the budget of the government. A double whammy.

227. If our lifespan increases but we are not yet willing to deal with what is before us to deal with in terms of the quality of life that we live and the choices we make, we will create a race of ‘the walking dead’ and think this is normal.

228. A long life littered with long periods lacking quality should never be celebrated, for we need to foster a greater understanding of the disease we encounter and what learning it represents. Our processes of prolonging life and not letting people die when their bodies give up reflects our misguided approach to the end of the life cycle and our overuse of interventions.

229. What you’re raising Rebecca are conversations that ought to be occurring at every level of government across the globe. We are headed for crisis, if you do not call what we have already exactly that… whether we are collectively willing to take responsibility for the way in which we have each contributed to the mess we’re in remains to be seen however eventually we will be forced to one way or another.

     1. I agree – we can either proactively begin addressing the issues we face now, or be forced to deal with them when the crisis becomes unignorably shocking – the question remains how long it will take to reach this point and how good our ignoring skills are.

        1. Yes our ignoring skills are historically pretty outstanding, with many wanting to continue in that manner I am sure. There are many however who surprise me with their openness and willingness to take responsibility at an individual level. Really know what this means however and being able to execute it in our own lives can sometimes be more than we realise.

        2. I agree, but there is much that could be done to support this on every level from policy through to advertisement, food production and the health and care systems, we can start making it more clear to those who wish to, how we can be more responsible for our way of life

        3. Yes and at an individual level that comes back to the degree to which we each live what it is that everyone eventually will. We can’t water down living it in full in order to fit in or keep the status quo, but be prepared to disturb and ruffle feathers…

230. This is a massive situation and one set to swamp us entirely in the not too distant future. Anyone in any doubts about this just has to imagine what would happen if we couldn’t get access to our medicines for just one week – the resulting mess would be horrific. The National Health Service does an amazing job, now it’s time for us to do our bit too.

231. I agree Rebecca, Careers of the elderly are brilliant – often working with resources of staff at a minimum. It seems that our awareness has moved a long way away from the concept of caring for our elders in our own families, to a duty that is out sourced. This current method adds to the isolation, loneliness and associated unsettled state of well-being that can come. I understand sometimes the care required is such that constant nursing supervision is essential and usually takes two nurses at a time to attend to many aspects of care. But this doesn’t account for the overall cultural approach of younger generations to place our elders in a home when they can’t quite manage on their own any more.
     It would be that long ago that this concept of residential care was promoted as a good idea. Surely we can retrace our steps and consider re-imprinting them with the concepts of more fully integrating generations rather than segregating them.

232. “By making changes in the way the whole population approaches lifestyle choices, we can improve overall health with the understanding that it will produce generations who age, with the potential to have less propensity for such large volumes of complex illness and disease.” With the state of our health today it is becoming clearly this is the only other road to turn down and in truth do we have anything to lose as the current way is slowly sinking.

233. We really do live in a totally unsustainable fashion that lacks any responsibility and foresight.

234. It’s interesting that we ourselves are not saying to the medical profession that we’d prefer to live a few months of quality than 5 more years of excessive medical intervention and a severely compromised quality of life. Perhaps this is a reflection of the quality we choose to live in day to day, and that we have not already established our lives to be of a high quality that we refuse to drop below.

235. The actual energetic quality of life being lived is such an important part of the equation here; the quality of relationship that we have with ourself and others is fundamental to our well-being.

     1. I agree Fiona, many say that they want to live a fun life even if it makes it shorter – eating and acting as they wish with no care for the consequences. But when we bring it back to quality, the quality we live and experience in life, our view changes from trying to live longer or trying to live a life of decadence, to one that is based on if we feel vital and joyful.

236. I have the feeling not only the view how to be with and treat elderly people needs a change, but also to prepare oneself for the years of being older in the way to truly look after one’s body and not to focus on the years of pension in order to get a relief and reward from the working years, but to build a life of joy concerning working so that we even being elder can contribute to the community and are able to work at least part-time.

237. What is really alarming about our current state of affairs is that we are very quickly losing our marker of what it means to be healthy. Will we soon be classing ‘health’ as having only one disease instead of two or three at once?

     1. I agree Rowena, health has become a sliding scale to accommodate our spiral into serious ill health – widen the ranges, lower the expectations and it makes it all look less like the crisis it is.

238. ‘Just as we all want our children to grow up to have successful careers and relationships, would we not equally want them to grow up and have a respectful, active and joyful old age?’ Wow, this question is really something for everyone to ponder, how do we set not only our children up for their old age, but also our own old age? Do we give it any attention whatsoever?

239. We are busting at the seems in so many ways, environmentally, our health, financially… something has got to give. The question is will we allow the correction or will we keep fighting.

240. Why do we wish to live longer? We have a common thread with all living things, we all have a self-life! Do we wish to be like a banana peel that takes 2 years to decompose?

     1. Ha – valid point! If we are not living in the fullness of who we are, with purpose and commitment to our task at hand (returning to Soul) while here on Earth, and if we believe that this is our only life, then naturally we will aim to squeeze as much life out of this physical form as we can, no matter the lack of vitality we suffer from trying to achieve this.

     2. It seems most people have a fixed idea that we live this once and hence have to ‘make the most of it’ – never mind the quality of health and wellbeing we live with or what we contribute to the whole.

        1. The funny thing is that most people don’t ‘make the most of it ‘, they squander life, despite the fact that they say that there is only one life. That goes to show that we are not as free to think as we think we are.

241. As we learn to become more integrated as a society we will find that our later years, as we approach our passing over, will become a time when we share our experience and appreciate our part within the whole, and still living life to the full. As I learn to take responsibility for how I live and the impact this has on my health I am letting go of being a victim as I understand more fully that I can support myself while at the same time becoming willing to accept help from others.

242. What is paramount in our healthcare system is “the quality of life lived – not just physical health but the wellbeing” of every individual – this includes not only the patients but the staff and management too. Only when every person takes responsibility for their own health and wellbeing will the experiential understanding of this then bring about true and lasting change.

243. Increased life expectancy can actually be a big boon as well as a huge burden. About ten years ago there were a lot of articles about countries being bankrupted by age care costs until people realised that much of that can be deflected by increasing the retirement age and that is happening now. Since then the next issue has appeared – as we get sicker we are in danger of bankrupting ourselves through health care costs. Here the remedy is not so simple.

244. We really need to start having this conversation on a global level, it should be discussed at the UN, G7 etc for us to wake up to the crisis that is unfolding in our young and our old.

     1. I agree Vanessa – this conversation needs to go global and big! We can no longer escape the reality of our own making.

     2. Vanessa I agree, although before any of our world leaders can talk about it, we, the people need to start to talk about it in our tea rooms at work and around our dinner tables at night. People have believed for years that governments dictate change but it has to be the other way round, people have to become the change that governments then bring in.

245. What an amazing blog Rebecca, reading through it and imagining that my lifestyle can foster dementia really clicks. I can see how by not focusing on what I’m doing and daydreaming while on the bus, or when I’m “taking a break” from what I’m doing, I am planting the seeds of dementia for my later years. I know we all do it, and it’s great to have reminders such as your blog to bring us back to reality.

246. Reblogged this on CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE EARLY IN LIFE and commented:
     Good Blog

247. I agree with all of you. This is a very important topic.

248. Thank you Rebecca for such an insightful blog. It is incredible that somehow we like to think that we are not going to grow old when from the very moment we are born we are in fact ageing. Ageing like dying is something that we all have to get a handle on and stop denying that both actually will happen to us all.

249. ‘How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.’ – If this line was truly understood, we would see very different role modelling and parenting in our societies, not only by parents but with a knowing that we are all parents all of the time – what do we actually reflect by way of living?

250. I love the idea of communities where the young are encouraged to support elderly – some of the care homes I’ve visited seem to be very sad places, with old people just sitting around in chairs looking lifeless.

251. Focusing on the quality of the way we live is essential as you offer here Rebeca for our future both young and old and a balanced sustainable system for us all as a way of living with taking responsibility as a major factor for ourselves and the whole of life as we know it “the quality of life lived – not just physical health but the wellbeing of the population.”

252. We should never dismiss what our elder generation can offer us. After all they have lived through the same conundrums that we have, albeit in a different guise, but the same issues none the less and have by their efforts established the platforms we stand on today. Therefore we have a collective responsibility to ensure that they are cherished to the end of their lives and appreciated in full for all they have brought to this world.

253. Lifestyle related disease can so readily be addressed and healed should we turn our attention to this with honesty and commitment to truly live.

254. This statement is so true Rebecca: “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.” I have noticed the elderly tend to fit very broadly into two categories, those who are content with the way their lives have developed and those who are unsettled and have regrets.And now a third category has emerged, of those who have switched off from their lives and retreated into themselves with some form of dementia and their remaining life is very limited. I have always loved talking to elderly people who are still mentally alert because they can have such wisdom and awareness from the decades they have lived.

     1. I also have always enjoyed the stories from the older folks that I know, and just recently I have met three elderly ladies who were in the second world war. There’s so much to learn from them, and a lot of wisdom goes to waste if we do not take the time to listen to them, or they retreat into themselves.

     2. Yes, very true Gill. I used to have a perception that the elderly are just burdens because all of the elderly people around me were very miserable and short with us as children. However, as I’ve grown older and gotten to meet more wonderful elderly people I feel so blessed to be able to call them my friends and learn from the wisdom they share with me.

255. Making different life-style choices could be joyful. So often I see that it’s said as a burden. Something very serious. Can there actually be something more gorgeous than starting to care deeply for ourselves?

     1. Letting go of comfort and a life-style that is keeping us in distraction is often seen as a chore and even a punishment, as opposed to an incredible opportunity for a joyful, healthy and vital life.

256. ‘Some homes have already begun to experiment with ways to bring society and the elderly back together, with one home in Finland giving cheaper rent to young people in the city, in return for a few hours a week spent with the residents’ This is awesome and truly needed but perhaps it would not be necessary if we were living in true community – if being separate had not become the norm.

257. A brilliant blog Rebecca – there is lots to ponder here that sorely needs to be discussed in our societies. One of the things that stood out for me was – ‘instead of striving for longer life, we foster greater awareness and responsibility for our individual health with the knowing that we will all one day grow old.’ – To learn from a young age that each and every one of us are responsible for our individual health and to the best of our ability live our lives in a way is deeply caring and honouring of ourselves and our own bodies, would be a total game changer.

258. We are clearly living beyond our means, and we know it, and our government leaders know it. What is it about us that is so complacent to let things escalate until the reach a catastrophe??

     1. One reason may be that those who borrow the money (increased government debt) – the elderly – don’t have to repay that money as the debt will be repaid by the next generation. Perhaps they don’t realise that they will be back themselves later on.

259. ‘Just as we all want our children to grow up to have successful careers and relationships, would we not equally want them to grow up and have a respectful, active and joyful old age?’ There is such a strong emphasis at school of preparing for university and college. How supportive it would be for our communities in the future if self care and building a loving relationship with one self was on the school curriculum.

260. We have a lot to learn about Quality. We have this erroneous assumption that lengthening our lives improves our quality of life, but this approach has done nothing to stem the rising tide of illness to the point of flooding our NHS and other resources as it is about to do. When we put quality first, we return to our knowing that how long we live is never more important that the quality we live our lives in and in doing so, we restore true health within us.

261. As a humanity we are so good at coming up with explanations of why things are the way they are, in order to not admit that we are the doers of our own ills. I often hear that the reason for cancer and other diseases becoming more and more common is because we are getting older and older but from what I know young people also get sick and the diseases referred to is not at all most common in elderly but rather in the midspan, so we cannot really blame us getting older for us getting sicker and sicker. It seems like us admitting that it’s the way we live our lives that is causing our ills is not the easiest of things. We still like to have our pizza in the weekend, or our candy on whatever day we have set out as the day we allow ourselves or our kids to have it, we want to have our glass of wine or beer to accommodate the meal but we are not willing or ready to take it away from our lives because we want to have it in a specific way. This is the hardest of things to change as it seems, to see, admit and change what might be the cause of us getting ill and sick. But on the other hand it’s no wonder that we use all of this because we haven’t often seen a reflection that there is more to life than meets the eye. As toddlers and as youngsters we often still have this with us but as we grow up we lose that sense of the feeling that there is something else or more to life as we know it. And if we lose that it sort of makes sense to dull the fact that we miss it like nothing else. There are many contributors along the way helping us forgetting that we are more, that there is more to life, such as the entire schooling system, where we learn that it’s more important to learn and study facts about things and remembering them for the exam, rather than connecting to the inner world of knowledge we have within us from the word go. That might be the subject of another writing though. Thanks for the blog Rebecca.

262. It makes sense to me the less we separate different portions of our community i.e. the elderly the more we live as a community, in our natural interdependence.

263. An elderly relative recently said how she enjoys the carers coming to her home as it’s her social contact with the outside world on a meaningful level. She also said how when people go into nursing homes they ‘don’t last long.’ And she wasn’t referring to how old people go into homes only when they are near the end of their current life but that somehow the homes are institutionally confirming there is no longer meaning or purpose in an old person’s life. It’s more than the homes being chronically underfunded and closing, it’s about how we view life and meaning and support people in this stage of their development. It’s like we acknowledge development in the young but that is perceived to wane each day we live until, at the end we end up in old people’s homes, the waiting lounges of death! We disempower ourselves by devaluing what we do bring in our elder years – the majority role model this so no-one gets inspired, but less engaged with life. We can break this cycle by valuing each other and ourselves at every stage of life.

     1. I have worked in many nursing homes and as a result would fight tooth and nail to avoid anyone going into one. Sure not all nursing homes are bleak but my goodness me, an appallingly high number suck what remains of a persons life force out of them.

264. Often as a society we celebrate how old someone can get, but we forget that it is really a person’s vitality that we should be celebrating rather than their age as such. How beautiful would it be if illnesses such as dementia could be reduced, and not by the effect of medications, but simply by the choice of the person to live a more loving and present life? There is much for us to work on as a society, and the current state of the elderly is a reminder for all of us to care more deeply for ourselves as well as them.

265. Great blog Rebecca, as human life expands and we remain living in a loveless society we lose our quality of life, I recently read about a scheme in the UK where they are running a nursing home in conjunction with a nursery school, and how both youngsters and the elderly are benefiting from the interaction.

266. Dementia is so rife it is becoming the ‘norm’ that in hospitals nurses have a set of questions they ask anybody to check they are fully functioning mentally such as ‘Do you know what day it is?’ ‘Do you know where you are?’

267. What if the human life span keeps increasing? When you ask this question I get an image of an overcrowded planet with not enough of anything for anybody. Does it make sense to prolong life in cases of ill health where death is inevitable without intervention? Of course we value life, but sometimes it is more loving to let people go without holding on for the sake of it. In some cases it makes sense to save lives. Each case needs to be treated in a unique way.

268. With the evidence that the cause of cancer is our life style, why are people not jumping up and down demanding action! Could it be there is no profit from prevention, compared to cures?

269. “Obesity is another major health concern, which is largely preventable”. Are we investing in industries that produce products that make us ill, with little foresight as to their real cost in terms of mopping up the health bill at the other end?

     1. Great point Rowena – there is a huge investment in products and foods that do not support the body and actually promote obesity and ill health, however, they exist largely because there is a market for it. And so it is a responsibility that lies in the hands of the consumer just as much as in the hands of the supplier. Perhaps as you have said, once the real cost of the health bill is really registered en masse, will we finally see a step up in this responsibility?

     2. Well said Rowena, every area no matter how uncomfortable or how much we don’t want to address it, needs to be looked at if it is contributing to the crisis of ill health the globe over. As countries, cities, families and individuals we have to look at what we invest in – our health, our future and having a joyful life, or the momentary and short term enjoyments and money that is always at our own expense further down the line.

270. The way we look at getting old needs to change also, so many people go down hill when they retire, and some people are still forced to retire when they are still more than capable of doing the job. Old people can have so much to offer so if we are going to live longer we need to live our lives without trashing the body so we won’t be health burdens and can carry on contributing.

     1. And without capping old people because of their age, the myths about old people not being good with technology, or that they’re slow and cannot contribute to companies have to be scrapped because there are many, many elderly people who are even more capable than youngsters.

271. “What can we do?” – simply start to truly self-love and care, to bring that quality of love and care to our body, to all our interactions and relationships.. to see that quality and spark remain [not dulled] in our elder years.

272. Thank you Rebecca for your important blog on the state of your Health care systems in UK and Australia has similar issues. We do need to see aging in a different light and make it OK to talk about these sensitive issues and educate people on these subjects.

273. Our youth and middle years are often abundant with health and can leave us with the misconception that how we are living does not affect us. But as the ageing begins the way we have lived builds and the impacts are without exception written on our bodies.

274. An interesting point to note about dementia is that it is not a consequence of ageing but a way of living, or not living to be more truthful. Therefore, diagnoses are now being made for a growing number of younger people. I myself have spoken to practitioners in the field who are supporting people in their early thirties who have been diagnosed.

     1. I agree Michael, while we see it only as a issue of the older generations we ignore the fact that it is far more present within young people then we will want to admit.

     2. A great point Michael – yet is it ringing alarm bells to anyone? Or is everyone too busy, distracted or simply checked-out to notice?

275. A long life is no substitute for living in connection with our Soul.

276. At the moment more and more treatments are found to keep people’s bodies alive even when there is a very low quality of life, as there is tremendous demand for that. In surveys people routinely ascribe a substantial value to being alive, even if just barely, so politicians and administrators respond. The difficulty is that this creates an escalating situation where we can look at a treatment costing half a million dollars to provide a few more months of life, yet there is a demand for such products.

277. Statistics surrounding illness and disease are certainly shocking, but if you added the families, friends and people affected by the illness to the equation almost every disease could well carry a toll in the billions.

     1. Well said Susie – the human cost is not limited to those living with the conditions but there are far more people affected in their lives too.

278. In the years since I was a child the life expectancy in the West has increased by between 15 and 20 years but I do not see a parallel improvement in the quality of life. In fact it is the complete opposite with the majority of the elderly alive only because of the medication they are taking and having little or no purpose in life other than perhaps to live longer and what is the point in that?

279. “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.” A fundamental education in our health care and a message that needs to be conveyed far and wide. We need to be teaching this to our children at a young age, so that we enable them to re-establish true health in their generation again and support them to deal with the massive health crisis that will most definitely be playing out in their not too distant future.

280. When we look at our statistics and see the devastating lives people are living and for this to be preventable by the choices we make this is huge. To take ownership of the irresponsible lives that we are living is the first step and then bring it back to the quality of life we are living is the next. Not just in one part of our lives but the whole.

281. The problems are presenting in the older generation but research showing links to lifestyle would indicate that earlier education could be a necessary preventive measure well worth considering.

282. I wonder how much retirement is a factor in the general decline in health as we age. We very understandably look forward to retiring from work, but is it possible that we are innately purposeful beings and this withdrawal from work leaves us feeling rudderless? I know that when I have purpose in my life it feels very different. It is of course very possible to have a purposeful retirement, so the issue is not retirement per se. But it would make an interesting piece of research for sure.

283. Great article with much to consider in how we are living and the pressure this is putting on many systems. I do wonder though if everything did go bankrupt how quick it would be until we realise the only way out of the mess is look at ourselves. It may seem harsh, but bankruptcy may act as a catalyst for us to reach a point of us not being able to look at anything else.

284. Everything mentioned here as what is facing us in the future is already happening now. Care homes are closing, there is inadequate provision for all elderly and the NHS is on its way to being crippled by a lack of staff already. Society as a ship is very much creaking. But we have made it this way, ventured off on a cruise that is going horribly! But we can return to base and rebuild a foundation of care and wellbeing. I know for me I need to heed the call to return and not continue this foray into ill health by not listening to what is plainly being communicated.

285. This is exactly how we need to be presented with statistics, in a way that is caring and considerate of everyone.

     1. Yes, the impact on people is very important when presenting statistics. That is quite true.

     2. Abby I love what you share, if all statistics and information was presented in this way we would end up having to stop and listen. Because we could all understand it.

286. Dementia homes are scary places now let alone if we start having more people younger and younger being placed in them.

287. There’s an enormous arrogance in how we see and relate to our own body. As ‘just’ a vehicle that makes us able to perform / do our tasks in life. Or as a precious vehicle that is able to express all the love we hold within? And that we can build an intimate relationship with to support us to heal ourselves from all the non-loving energies we’ve allowed in over time. If we would relate to our body from this working-together-point-of-view we would start to be much more respectful in the way we treat it. The more I am honest, the more I heal, the more respect I have for my body and the more love and self-worth I feel within me. Thanks to my body and its cooperation with my Soul.

288. It feels like we are so far gone down a track of ill health and lack of responsibility of not taking care of ourselves, and relying on others to mend us all the time, that it is going to take at least a couple of generations to make a substantial change. It needs a change of attitude and thoughts before the action will take place and it may take the imploding of the bankrupt services to wake us up. But that doesn’t stop us from starting right now wherever we are and feel a pull to start the change, it will be felt by everyone.

     1. Gill the reality is that it will take time, but it need not take time at the same time. We all know something is not right, that things can’t continue the way they are but how many times a day do we do something about it? For most of my life I was far too comfortable to just put off taking care of myself.

289. What if the human life span keeps increasing? Well that all depends on how we react to it really, doesn’t it.

290. What your article also very importantly flags up Rebecca is that not only are we on target to bankrupt our National Health System (which is actually happening now) but there will come a tipping point in our nation where the desperately sick far out number the healthy population. What do we do then, when there are more sick people than able ones, how do we look after everyone? It is totally unreasonable to rely on a bankrupt institution to deal with it and it is an issue we need to begin to address now by honestly examining how our way of life is slowly but surely taking us all under.

291. The body is not meant to live forever. We live on after our body dies, so why hold on to it?

292. I totally concur that the way we live from the start is the product of what we leave with. But, our bodies have a shelf life. How many things in life are guaranteed for life and how long is its life meant to be? It is normally your life, for the offer is never transferable. In the US the big lottery payouts annual payments are in instalments over a 20 year period, the small print states or unless you die, your winnings are not transferable! When we live life to its fullness does it matter how long we are here?

     1. As a human race throughout history we can see evidence of man’s seemingly insatiable need for greater power, longer life. We have often been fascinated by the idea of immortality, or supreme knowledge and vast wealth. We can also see the fear of death and the end of our days – perhaps if it was more openly discussed and youth was not upheld as the only desirable thing, ageing and dying might feel less scary. But also, as you say, could it come down to not feeling we get enough out of life? Feeling like we haven’t lived and that to do so we need to travel and experience new things? Could it be that actually a life spent knowing and living who you are is the most rewarding and fulfilling way to live that feeds you back so at the end of your life there is no sense of a lack.

293. A lot of the gloomy predictions about future healthcare costs are based on the fact that we have an aging population, many of whom have chronic illnesses. This is a very real concern for policy making and governments. It is clear that two main things need to be addressed. 1. The way we are living that is creating illness and disease at rates beyond anything we have experienced before and 2. The way healthcare is delivered and the need to switch from reactive, high cost acute care to prevention and health promotion.

     1. I agree Fiona. A more proactive health care model that is built on self-responsibility would be a very loving step forward.

     2. I agree Fiona the two things you have succinctly highlighted here are needed now more than ever, the thing is this is currently just not happening on the scale it needs to.

294. I love the practical examples you cite where the community is bringing the generations back together in responsibility and connection Rebecca – and not to be set apart by age as modern society is mostly practicing.

295. Imagine if we did actually focus on quality of life rather than… Quantity… The will be an extraordinarily different place.

296. I sense in the future that retirement villages and elderley care facilities will become much more of a privilege for the wealthy. The middle class will need to open their homes to accommodate and care for our elderley extended family members. This may be a much needed correction and force us to deepen our relationships with elder generations.

297. When we raise our children, we’re adding not only to their present state of being, but we’re in fact also contributing to the quality of life they experience when they are in their seventies and eighties. To me this is a complete shift and offers a far broader and responsible way. In choosing for ourselves as adults to live as best as we can in connection to ourselves, we’re offering a reflection from which people can learn, if this is their choice. At least we’re offering the possibility. Which is not so commonly seen these days.

298. We can no longer expect our medical services to mop up the disregard we choose to live in. Taking responsibility for our health can be and is very simple, a responsibility that we need to be weaving into our health care models now so that it becomes a future norm.

     1. Well said Rowena. Our current lack of responsibility will bankrupt healthcare systems at this current rate – new models are a must.

299. I personally would hate to live on longer with poor health or dementia, so it’s up to me to make sure I look after this body as well as I can and stay present in all I do. It’s my past choices that concern me though, for the years that I did live with absolutely no regard for myself that worry me, for these things have a way of catching up on you. The question is how can we educate people into knowing that our healthcare does start with ourselves and our lifestyle choices and every bad choice does have a consequence.

300. Thank you Rebecca, it is a conversation worth having to be more aware of not just ourselves but together collectively where we are headed. We have amazing systems set up, although there is more we can improve however, the point here been made to improve our systems is to improve the quality in how we each live while we work within these systems. This will raise the quality of our systems. Simple concept but look at it. If we live a certain quality of life through the holding of connection to our bodies we will know how to design the quality needed for our systems. This has already been proven by Universal Medicine through, health and wellbeing, aged care, palliative care, oncology, medicine, and I’m doing it my industry of IT. Universal Medicine and the wisdom of our seer Serge Benhayon presents energetically what is going on. Students of Universal Medicine are also knowingly presenting what is really going statistically in our world that the media are unashamedly not providing us. This blog and others are a great representation of that. So, we just need to connect back to ourselves and each other.

301. A growing number of people don’t want to look after their own parents, let alone pay for someone else’s parents to be looked after. We exist in an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality and yet as everything is made up of energy first and foremost then this way of living has no foundation at all, it is purely the height of irresponsibility.

302. Changing life expectancies have a huge financial effect. The fact that life expectancies now increase more slowly or may even be decreasing has been a financial boon for pension managers as their projected liabilities are becoming smaller.

303. The average life expectancy of humans is increasing at an unprecedented rate. Seen as one of the great achievements of the century. But how can this be an achievement if there is no quality of life because you’re just held together with this or that medication and not taking any responsibility for your part in your own health, which then affects everyone.

304. Learning from your blog how “…90-95% of cancers have their root cause in environment and lifestyle, such as diet, stress, smoking etc…” makes you wonder how much this percentage rate would drop if just over eating, smoking and alcohol were non-existent in our communities… Utopian and idealistic it may sound, but considering these are conscious choices to participate in, it shows us just how much our choices do affect our health and each other.

305. Hospital beds are full – highly qualified medical support staff spend a lot of their time playing what I call ‘Bed Hockey’ shuffling patients around from ward to ward. The more people get sick, the worse this becomes, with people in pain waiting hours for a procedure as more ‘urgent’ cases come in. We hear stories of elderly patients being left in corridors for hours. We need to educate ourselves more in simple forms of self-care, no expensive pharmaceuticals required, so that hospital beds are free for those who are truly in need. Self-Care is the best preventative medicine available.

306. “lifestyle choices of our youth become the quality of life we experience in our elder years…How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.” This is a statement worthy of being repeated multiple times – after all there lies a huge responsibility in the choices we make on a daily basis no matter what our age.

307. Is it really worth living longer if it means a poor quality of life? When will we collectively stop to address this situation? The need to do so is so well set out here.

     1. If you are convinced that this is your only life it can make sense to hang on to it as much as possible as it seems general accepted practice now. If that isn’t true, though, the considerations become more interesting.

308. Humanity is blind to the enormity of Dementia and what lies in store for us over just the next 10 years, let alone beyond. It will require an immense co-operation from the whole community to really deal with this disease, coupled with a huge shift in our awareness as the real causes and cure of this crippling illness.

     1. I agree Rowena, it is a burden that is only growing and cannot be left solely to the care of the health service – more and more the NHS is looking to increase prevention and community care, but our communities are not prepared because we all live as if we are separate, without a feeling of community and so there is no community to rely on

309. Rebecca, this is a brilliant article that should be newspaper headlines. For anyone who listens, they would be alarmed at the statistics and the forecast figures and the reality of our current situation.

310. This statement feels so true Rebecca, “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.” I have seen a few people near the end of their lives and how they are varies tremendously, as how we all live our lives varies tremendously too. The quality of our lived life is the marker for our future so we need to take responsibility for our health when we are young, and maintain this as the body gets older. Draining the resources is draining to ourselves too.

311. What has ever happened to dignity with age? Our elders have so much wisdom to share and so much joy and inspiration for the next generation in their hearts but this is not being shared… this is a great crippler of a disease in itself.

     1. I agree Joshua, having grown up without my grandparents until the age of 14 years, and then returning to the UK, I suddenly found myself enjoying listening and just sitting with them, as their life stories were fascinating to me. My grandparents having lived through two world wars, lived through the great depression, worked in service, and the coal mines, lost brothers to the war, and too scared to answer the telephone because it was all new to them. There is so much that we can learn from our elderly if we stop and take the time to listen.

312. ‘Research is showing us that around 90-95% of cancers have their root cause in environment and lifestyle, such as diet, stress, smoking etc.’ This is an incredible statistic and shows just how much we are in control of our own health and wellbeing… our illnesses are not so random as we conveniently like to believe.

313. We are first and foremost responsible for our own health and evolution in life. Because we’re so focused on taking care of others – which is in fact poor care if we’re honest enough to look at the energetic quality that the jobs are done in – that we’re constantly giving our power away. To deeply appreciate oneself is to be claimed back as ‘normal’. This will change the way we age completely. As we’re appreciating ourselves through our lives, we will feel that we’ve got value because we are and in feeling so, we will naturally know our place in the world. Very different from how it is now.

314. Statistics are great at showing the general trend in which humanity is heading and despite some of the best doctors, scientists and technology at hand, our health in vitality terms is decreasing rapidly. We may be living longer but the amount of illnesses that we carry with us into old age is multiplying. 30 years ago we might die of a heart attack from heart disease, but now, with the marvels of medicine, we are kept alive for 15 or 20 years longer but our quality of life is diminishing. I know I would rather die in my 70s still having a vitality for life rather than live into my 90’s with a multitude of illnesses, struggling to enjoy life.

315. There is a lot of responsibility of being a human – all the generations we affect as we grow up and move on, and yet with a really decent look are we truly living to that responsibility? Could we really handle living longer if we still don’t understand that the basics, such as loving ourselves, loving our bodies and loving each other is not a foundation?

316. The figures on Dementia are staggering and very sad when we are aware that it is an entirely preventable disease but that we need to start early on in our lives to remain consciously present.

317. Quite a few people have used the fact that we live longer now to back up claims that humanity is doing well. If the true state of humanity’s wellbeing was taken into account (rather than just ‘age reached’) we may see that we are in more trouble than ever.

318. How many people could say they could die tomorrow and have no regrets? When we live with purpose, every day becomes priceless and eternal.

319. It’s almost like we are prolong life because we have a warped sense of how precious it is. What if life truly is precious, but in it’s lived and walked quality and not in it’s length.

320. For me there is a question here about attitudes to death too. I feel that the focus on ‘how long we live’ is in part at least, fuelled by a fear of death and an unwillingness to explore what really happens when we die. If in truth, we live on after death, in a spiritual or soulful form…and then we reincarnate or live other lives, we might re-evaluate our attitude to ageing too and focus so much more on quality of life rather than longevity.

321. “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.” You have nailed it here Rebecca. A brilliant article bringing to light some of the current ill-health issues we are facing as developed nations worldwide as well as more specifically in the UK. Unless we begin to take responsibility for our own choices and healthy wellbeing while we are young, it is for the most part too little, too late by the time we are in our elderly years. The degree of dementia you cite is extraordinary, though unsurprising in many ways given the extent of discontent and disharmony so many live with for most of their lives. I would want to withdraw out of so-called ‘normal’ life too if that is all I could see it held for me.

322. I love the initiatives like the example given in Finland. The elderly are a valued part of our society yet we seem to be in management mode. We don’t need to manage them and keep them on the outer. We can live together and value what all ages in society bring.

323. So very true ageing and all that it entails is not for when we are old or older but starts when we are young. That what we are faced with or meet in our elderly years is what we have walked in all the years before.

324. There is such a culture of old people being no longer useful. I remember when my dad was made redundant and couldn’t get a job. It wasn’t the money that was important to him but all the factors about purpose and contributing to society. It was very sad to watch. He now has dementia and I do feel he felt pointless and rejected after being rejected for all sorts of jobs and gave up. This didn’t help him with his choice to stay present or give up.

325. “… Our focus on a healthy and successful life being one with an ever-increasing life span needs a shift instead to the quality of life lived …” Yes, quality or perhaps deepening connection and awareness of ourselves.

326. We’ve just had completed in our local town a new building for age care. The sign that went up last week showed it was for dementia care and respite care. Clearly a growing ‘market’ for such specialised homes.

327. With all the knowledge and statistics we now know about lifestyle related disease, should we not be paying a lot more attention to wellbeing and looking after our bodies in the school curriculum? Does this not meet the requirements for a suitable, cost effective and wide reaching strategy to start supporting the NHS and our population’s health through other professions/systems?

328. It feels like my generation (who are now around our 60’s) have been very selfish. Our parents had the hardships of WW2 and wanted us to have a better life. We have lived in comfort and indulgence, and now the systems and governments ate strapped for cash, and the younger generation are going to have to work longer and harder for their pensions. Now what are we doing? We don’t want to see it so we are going into dementia, straining the services even more. It feels a wake up call for some responsibility.

     1. I agree Gill, the younger generation are going to have to work longer and harder for their pensions but a lot of them are struggling in their twenties already with exhaustion. So it seems as though it is going to be one hard slog for the younger generation, if things do not change.

329. A great call Rebecca looking at health care and how we live from when we are young allowing how we will be with our health and vitality when we are old and our responsibility for this. Living respecting and mixing all ages and the learning and support from this in life feels amazingly beautiful and how we know true care and love to be.

330. Since I was a child the life expectancy of people has increased by something like 15-18 years, which is huge. However, the quality of life in these intervening years has not kept pace but in fact the opposite. This surely begs the question whether humanity is focusing its attention on the most appropriate things in life?

331. I agree we need to consider the consequence of our choices concerning our health in our youth. When we or others get into old age, say hands out “how did this happen?”. How we live builds a foundation, it can either be shaky or a true support, this is where we all have a responsibility for our own health but also how these choices impact on the general population.

     1. Samantha wise words and ones that its up to each of us to choose and then whether we like it or not, we live with the consequences. The problem is how many times do we need to keep repeating the same mistakes, or are we ready to make changes to our lives today. It’s something I ask myself when I go down the same path, there is a complacency that I can choose instead of living with the love and care I know I am.

332. To be honest, I don’t see a lot of vital and joyful elder men and women. Which means that we’ve not found a mainstream, normal way to live that supports us to live a joyful, vital and purposeful life until our last breath. To me this is actually very sad. Especially, because I’ve found that there’s a way of living that supports in full who we are, our own evolution as well as that of others. Why not share our wisdom. Rather than shutting down and stop expressing what we feel. There’s so much to share. So, so much.

333. Rebecca, great article, this is so true; ‘Our older generation has a wealth of knowledge and experience to share and we in turn have a duty of care to them, to provide dignity, love, connection, care and respect up until their last breath.’ We are missing out on so much by removing our elder generation from our everyday lives, it feels unnatural for our elders to be separated, moving them into nursing homes or them living alone – this is not true community. It is very beautiful to read about the projects that are happening to re-connect young people and elders, these feels like a win-win situation.

     1. I agree – in anceint times and in cultures that are less ‘modernised’, the elders of the community are honoured and listened to for their wisdom – however here it is worth noting that we should not simply respect the elderly because of age, no matter your age you have life experiance and wisdom to share. It is equally respectful to see our elderly and know we will not repeat their life choices as it is to look to them as role models – we have to discearn the life they have lead and see the end product it has lead to and this will tell you all you need to know and in this there is much to learn from.

334. There are still so many people in this world that really aren’t educated to the point of understanding about real healthcare and how much responsibility we can take for our own wellbeing. It still is so acceptable to do whatever we want to ourselves with smoking, drinking, over indulging in all manner of foods with no exercise or excessive exercise, and then expecting the health system to pick up the pieces when our bodies start to break down and deteriorate. As the statistics have proved, this is unsustainable and unless we all chip in and help save health system unnecessary expenses by looking after ourselves better, there will be a lot more needless suffering in the world of tomorrow.

     1. An alarming picture Kevmchardy. Not only is this non-sustainable in terms of the healthcare system, it is also non-sustainable in terms of the human being who is living in such a body. What we have allowed to become our norm is an indictment of an intelligence that puts material goods and appearances ahead of living with qualities of joy, vitality, harmony and deep sense purpose as well as love and honouring of self and all others. This ought to be our measure for health, not an existence which simply boasts a lack of life-threatening disease, reliant on caffeine and sugar, and often doped up to the eye-balls with various medications. Very true we are sliding downhill fast – it can not be sustainable – we are heading for a rocky road.

335. When we try to carry all of our stuff around it decreases our life span. The tortoises that Darwin brought back from the Galapagos finally died in 2006 at 175 years old. How many of us are able or willing to live in harmony?

336. Opening up this conversation is very needed, and statistics need to be put in context. A person in the 1940s was more likely to be killed by a childhood disease which actually meant those who lived usually went on to live to ripe old age if they weren’t not killed in war. So are we actually living longer? Those that survived were rarely a burden on society, and usually worked until they dropped dead. So what was the difference and what can we learn from this presentation? “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.” When we share openly with complete transparency and no agenda everyone will benefit and maybe ill health will not be such a burden on society. “By making changes in the way the whole population approaches lifestyle choices, we can improve overall health with the understanding that it will produce generations who age, with the potential to have less propensity for such large volumes of complex illness and disease.” Could it be that we can already go into society and take a model from what is being lived and then replicate that on a broader scale?

337. Even the level of illusion that we can choose to ignore and how we are ageing with the facial enhancements, be it surgical or creams, is just another way of ignoring the truth of how we are living. What are we holding onto and trying to last longer if the quality of that being is totally disconnected to the true beauty from within?

338. ‘Much of the current burden on the NHS’s time and funds comes from illness and disease that result from life style choices and these health problems only become worse and more complicated in older years.’ We have developed a dependency on our medical system and let go of personal responsibility for our healthcare. A few simple choices in terms of how we live, what foods we eat, how we think and speak can make all the difference. Dementia doesn’t need to happen as a matter of course, Diabetes Type 2 can be avoided, our education needs to include personal health care.

339. Hear hear Rebecca, it’s not about getting old or our concern with external appearances that needs addressing, it’s about the responsibility we choose to live along the way that makes the difference to how we age. When we think we can get away with self abusing ourselves through diet and lifestyle when young without it having any effect on how we age we are fooling ourselves. Living longer is not better it’s the quality of life we choose to live in. How many of us wait until our body rings a warning bell that all is not well before we even consider making changes to the way we are choosing to live and even then, how many of us do this short term before returning to our old ways.

     1. I agree – I remember having this conversation with one of my friends in their early twenties and their response to taking more care of themselves was that they thought by the time they were old technology would have advanced so that there would be a cure for most illness and maybe even the ability to place a human consciousness in a machine so it didn’t matter how they lived now. It is amazing the lengths we will go to, to abuse our bodies and expect the pieces to be picked up and put back together by someone else.

        1. Wow that is quite a statement or belief that your friend had! Also placing a lot of faith in medical advancement! Bit of a gamble if you really look at it! Our refusal and wilful ignorance only says to me that we are run often by the most unloving of energy that does not care a jot for the form it inhabits.

        2. I agree, but in a way he was at least honest enough to say it – I think a lot of us have this belief, that we can live as we live and when we get sick, someone will be there to fix us up

     2. I do this all the time, and often will wait until something is really bad before I do anything about it, it is a very destructive pattern and one that for a deeper understanding needs a big dose of love, care and tenderness. Then slowly but surely the ability to listen to the body becomes clearer and actioning support more immediate.

340. One consequence of an increasing life span can be that old people become a bigger and bigger part of the population and at the moment old people vote more regularly than young people leading politicians to design policies that suit old people. This can and has lead to countries going more and more into debt which has to be repaid by the younger people.

     1. An interesting perspective on this issue Christoph, which highlights the irresponsibility of all in the failure to look at the bigger picture.

     2. This article by Rebecca just begins to highlight some of the issues we are facing as a society, and then when you read the comments such as yours Christoph, it expands the issue and supports us in understanding where we could all be headed and with what could happen should we not begin to address this together.

     3. That is exactly what happened in the UK with the vote to leave the EU, the older generations were wanting to return to the ‘good old days’ the days of the empire. They did not think about the consequences for the next generation who literally have had access to Europe taken away from them.

341. In the end, it’s not (only) about making different (life style) choices, which is very obvious. But more than that, to start feeling into what FEELS loving to us. To allow ourselves to make caring and loving choices. Not because we have to or because we want a certain (end) result. No, just because we’re worth it. And building that worthiness step by step, moment by moment, day by day. And what age we will reach won’t be of so much importance. Not that we don’t want to live long, but that it isn’t the goal or mission in life. Our very first aim then will become to evolve by choosing more and more awareness and in choosing that, to forever build our love!

342. We are living longer, but we are not necessarily living longer joyfully – the statistics show how much old age has become a burden on the heath care system due to illness and disease. Why are we living so much longer but with such less quality – perhaps we need to look at how we feel about death?

343. Clearly, there is no point in living longer if our quality of life is very poor! I would much rather die younger but be vital until the end rather than spending my last 10 – 15 years on medication to support with debilitating conditions. Whilst this may sound very blunt, it is great that you have started this conversation, Rebecca, as it is one that is needed.

344. People seem to be getting build up of physical and mental conditions and symptoms, which do not improve and they end up living with them as their normal. So people will say ’I’m fine’ when asked how they are because they have forgotten what good health feels like. It is possible to change these patterns and live joyfully into old age, but there’s little sign of it at the moment. Lots of people assume old age and deteriorating health go together, but this need not be so.

345. We seem to make decisions so much from reaction, only seeing the short term fix, rather than truly taking the time to consider the responsibility we have for future generations, and the bigger picture. For example, post world war two the baby boom was encouraged, and only now are we seeing the dire consequences of that decision.

346. There are some excellent care homes around but is this really the solution to our ageing population? Is this really where we want to end up when we cannot care for ourselves any more? Or is there a more loving answer to this – one that is born of true family and real community values? One that sees us supporting each other to be at home? There must surely be a complete change in the way we run our social service and our attitude to it. These sorts of issues are everyones responsibility. How will we respond?

347. I always remember my mother sharing with me about people she knew that were ill, that it was about the quality of their life that was important until they passed away, and not about ‘extending’ the time they had left. This has always stayed with me, and seems even more relevant today than it did then, as people put so much emphasis on ‘what they are doing’ with their lives rather than on ‘how they are living them’. Quality is everything, and if this is addressed it changes so much not just for the individual, but for those around them too.

348. We certainly have some huge issues looming ahead of us that will require us to develop a multi-faceted approach to dealing with them. The bonus is that it will require us to pull together as a community rather than leaving it all to this or that institution. We have such precious potential to make life about quality rather than longevity. Death is an extremely natural part of life, a guaranteed event that cannot be predicted but can be well prepared for via the quality of life we enable our selves to live.

     1. “Pulling together as a community” can only truly happen as a result of ‘pulling together’ and re-uniting as an individual. As long as we remain fragmented as individuals then there will be no genuine unity within communities. And this is what we see at the time of disasters, we see people temporarily coming together and then springing apart again afterwards. Wholeness within communities starts from wholeness within ourselves first.

349. It is all very well that we are living longer, with many people out there proving we can work on without the need to retire completely, but it all comes down to the quality of our health, if we have to work later and later in life and we are in poor health, that is not much fun.

350. Great research Rebecca! The information has always been there, but few are looking at what is being presented. No one can say the writing on the wall was not there! And, in this case, being shouted from the rooftops and it is still wholly ignored! But, there are those that have seen the writing and heard the bell toll. The ripple of change has begun!

351. “Our entire social perspective of ageing needs a seismic shift away from the current state of denial . . .” That is so true Rebecca and it is so wonderful that you put your finger on this topic so very well. Most of us needs to be shaken to be more awake for what is in front of us instead of burying it even furthermore.

352. Interestingly, where the human lifespan is still increasing, for women much of this increase is spent in ill-health, i.e. these are not quality years of additional life.

353. This morning I read an initiative in regards to health about pre-care instead of after care. How would it be if we would start to put money into prevention of illness and disease, simply by sharing with people how love live a simple and loving life!

     1. I agree Floris, many health services are looking more and more to prevention, but when you read their policy documents, they have no idea what prevention is other than that our health care needs it if it is going to keep going – their leaflets on self-care only go as far as telling you to make sure you have a well-stocked medicine cabinet, perhaps exercise – there is as yet not consideration of prevention being linked to the way we look after ourselves, the very way we live being what will determine our future health

354. It is inevitable that we will all grow older but there is such a focus on people in the middle – everything is about work and lifestyle and making it rather than supporting each other for various and all life stages. We are missing out if we just forget about the quality of life of the elderly and simply make it about living longer.

355. We can eat well, exercise well and be physically fit and healthy but most importantly is how we treat ourselves – our mental and emotional health. If we have spoken harshly to ourselves, lived in disregard and self-loathing from young then that is what will create our lives and be there as we age as well. On the other hand if we have a loving relationship with ourselves, honour and respect ourselves from young then that is the foundation we will age beautifully on.

     1. It is never too late to start living a loving relationship with our self! Even if our past chosen lifestyle has damaged and worn-out the current vessel we occupy. We can have a knowingness that we don’t have to take the illness and disease with us, in the next life!

356. When patients come into an emergency department, doctors are now asking elderly people and those with life-limiting illnesses, what their wishes are in the way of life-sustaining treatment – these are conversations that are very much needed in a healthcare system that is overwhelmed with the sheer number of people inundating them everyday.

357. If we live a life of true quality and love, and not focus all our attention on just the doing, then this surely would be a great start.

358. Great article Rebecca, many of us fear ageing and do our best to avoid it and the signs of it. As you say things like anti-wrinkle cream etc.. are everywhere. It seems like the inevitable strain of old age is something we just have to accept. Whereas I know this is not the case, the way we look after ourselves now has a direct affect on the way we will be in our later years in life. So what quality do we want – we can’t just get to say 60/70/80 and say I wish I had not lived so recklessly but we can now, although it is never really too late.

359. In our society our older people are not always appreciated or valued for who they are and what they have shared with the world. Bringing respect and decency to all our relationships will go a long way in supporting each other through the whole of our lives.

     1. I agree Jane, often the elderly are looked upon as if they have nothing to contribute to society, but if we look on them in that way it’s not surprising that they mirror that back to us. So I suppose the question is have we given up on our elderly?

     2. Or simply treating old people as equals would make a big difference.

360. Even though research is telling us that environmental and lifestyle choices contribute to 90-95% of cancers are we listening? Do we want to hear that the way we choose to live affects our health and that we can make different choices that will support the body and our wellbeing or do we choose to remain in the comfort that we are so familiar with? We cannot complain and moan when illness and disease strikes when we know that we could have done something about it if we had simply chosen to listen.

361. “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.” I love this line as it confirms the commitment to be connected, to live with love in one moment today will without doubt set up the foundation for the future.

362. It’s just such a scary thing looking at these statistics and the terrible state we are in, with it only getting worse unless we really start changing the way we live and start taking responsibility for ourselves way more seriously.

363. At the other end of the scale is someone aged 95 who has lived with with vascular dementia for eight years. He can feel, hear, taste, all other senses and physical functions have gone. He does occasionally have insight, remembers and connects, however fragile, with the world around him. What is the point of human life span increasing when quality of life is stripped away?

364. Thank you Rebecca, this article raises some very real and important questions, such as: what is it that we are avoiding by denying and isolating the elderly population of our communities? And could it just be a case of a way of irresponsible living that is actively encouraged when we are young that goes on to foster a relationship with time and age that is dismissive? And is self-respect and self-love in fact the basis for what will bring genuine change?

365. Dementia is a cruel disease. We often associate it with mental decline and memory loss, but because it is progressive and a disease of the brain, and neural circuits in the brain connect to every physical, emotional function, it does over time impact on the whole body. It is no longer just an old person’s disease. According to Alzheimer’s Society “around 4% of people with Alzheimer’s are under 65”. Yet genetically caused dementia, early onset exists, we also have to look at the way we live. It is possible to meet patients with dementia in their early sixties and find them bed ridden. incontinent, no longer, speaking, walking, and fed by carers daily. Providing all round support for patients at this stage of their illness is where the full cost of dementia is felt.

     http://www.alzheimersresearchuk.org/about-dementia/types-of-dementia/alzheimers-disease/early-onset-alzheimers/

366. If the research on cancer is showing us that 90-95% is related to environment and lifestyle then my logic says that this has to apply to all our other diseases too, cancer is not a stand-alone illness in this regard. When we are young our bodies will bounce back from many of our self-inflicted ills such as hangovers and the like and we arrogantly think we can get away with it. But the effects will show up many years later when our bodies move into our elder years, the reserves it needs have been squandered. In my book life style is the number one cause of illness and therein lies our power of tackling our current health issues and setting a new benchmark of health care for the future.

367. I love what you have shared about the home in Seattle being shared by a nursery, this to me makes complete sense. The children get to share the wisdom of the elderly and learn to have a greater understanding of what it is to grow old and the elderly get to share the joy of being with young children. This offers an opportunity for both young and old to re-unite where it may not have been possible, as quite often grandparents live too far away to have regular contact.

368. The bringing together the old and the young to learn from each other was something we have lost in our search for a comfortable life. Have we reached a natural animal method of existence of abandoning the old from the herd?

369. There was a comment on the front page of the newspapers yesterday that one of the ways to combat dementia was for the elderly to stay active, to stay engaged. This mirrors your blog Rebecca, and what Serge Benhayon has been saying for years. Getting old is not about stopping, giving up, checking out – it’s simply an opportunity to share with society in a different way…. a different stage of life that we continue our evolution with.

370. Brilliant Rebecca, we have focused for so long on stretching out our tenure on earth, but at no stage have we addresssed the greater issue – how we interact and live here together. It’s clear in the state of our health and in the suggestions you generally hear about curbing reproduction like we are a pest, that our ability to collaborate and co-exist leaves a lot to be desired. The problem to me isn’t how many of us there are but the way we continue to choose to live.

371. What if our lifestyle choices do not just affect us but impact on each other? Would we make different choices then? The more I consider the possibility that we can if we are united and work together as one, bring healing to our race, the more I feel this is true. Perhaps we are reaching the stage where such a ‘radical’ answer needs to be explored – although it isn’t really that radical is it…to believe that unity is healing for us all?

372. A recent experience with a local hospital has shown me the different ways people get ill in their old age – apparently at the moment flu is seriously affecting people’s health and, despite vaccinations and precautions, many are in dire need of resuscitation and hospitals are struggling to find enough beds and doctors for everyone who needs urgent treatment, and other less urgent patients are left lying in pain. This is a world-wide issue, we do not have the resources to support the illnesses we are developing.

     1. Carmel that is an eye opening situation and a reality that most of us try to avoid, yet when you look at the whole of society together you clearly see a world wide pandemic with no clear answer in the way it’s currently being approached. That is from fixing the problem rather than choosing a quality in the way each of us live.

373. It’s great to begin the discussion between what having a successful life means as opposed to what quality of life is. For so long we have looked at success as gaining qualifications, position, power, employment, houses, cars and earning money. Our health has paid the consequences of such pursuits. But if we lived life from the angle of making everything about quality, like the domino effect, everything else would shift and fall into place.

374. ‘How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.’ And in all ways, physically, mentally …body shapes literally change in response to what we walk in the world.

375. Our ailments, diseases, injuries, health and general wellbeing all have the potential to influence our next life, we don’t get born with a clean slate and so the sooner we start to understand and live from truth, the sooner we will be able to take steps towards sorting this mess of a life out.

376. It makes sense to me that the way we live gives us the type of body/health we have and the quality of life we experience. Therefore we can ill afford to ignore this, or look at it from just a short term perspective. Our healthful choices from young are building the foundations that will support a healthy older body.

377. What you share is so true Rebecca. A seismic shift would be great as the insolation and separation is massive for our elderly. Programs for primary students that introduce socializing with our elders would be a great start. Sometimes it seems that when adults meet up with elders with declining health they feel a bit (or a lot) confronted. This could be because what they are feeling is the possibilities of their own choices being projected in to the future.

378. What if we worked on the end at the start of our lives, if we knew exactly how we were meant to pass over because it was the same way we came in, with deep care, love and nurturing? When we wait for someone else to offer this to us in the middle of our lives or throughout the intervening years, we abdicate our own responsibility to contribute to our own health to be the aged care we know we need and therefore can offer ourselves and others.

     1. Great point Lucy…. where is the joined up thinking, from the cradle to the grave?

379. It is indeed wise to consider astutely how we are each living on a daily basis now for this will become the body and form we will end up with undeniably later in life. It is irresponsible to equate age with inevitable demise and ailments, restrictions and such for age can be equally graceful, loving rather than heavily medicated and absent of true vitality if our inner-most truth is made our way from young, nurtured, fostered and life truly lived and committed to.

380. Your statistics on the number of people with dementia Rebecca are staggering, I knew it was increasing but 10 times Wembley stadium, my goodness. As a child of the 1950’s, I don’t remember anyone having dementia, it is now also occurring in people in their 50’s and 60’s and these people live on for another 20 years becoming dependent on care for a long period of their lives. At the moment, for many, the quality of life is not directly proportional to their ageing life.

     1. It is staggering Gill and it begs the question why we don’t have this issue at the top of our agenda everyday. It is an arrogance that can’t accept we don’t have the answers in our current education model. That a way to uncover the answers is to be more humble and more willing to open our eyes and our senses to the fact that the way we currently live does not make sense and is making us sick.

381. Quality not quantity.

     1. That is what I also picked up on reading this blog Nick, as Rebecca shares it is about the quality in which we live, not the length in which we live as yes, we are living older than ever before, but what is the actually quality of the life if we have dementia, Alzheimer’s, depression, loneliness, anger, bitterness etc.

     2. But, how far from the truth is what Mr Burns is always saying, from the Simpsons; with enough money, you can live forever. There are companies that will freeze you till a cure is found, for a price. Why not just come back in a fresh vehicle?

        1. Great point Steve. Avoiding death is just one of the many ways we can control – right up to the end we can surrender or not.

382. It is an inevitable fact of life that we will not be young forever – this is something the young find hard to perceive and seem to consciously choose to be unaware of. I was like that when I was young. The young of today may even start seeing dementia happening earlier rather than later as never before have we had so many devices to check out on.

383. When we look at people in a particular age bracket, some people can look 10 years younger, and others look 10 years older. This goes to show that the quality in which we live can very easily be seen, even if the lifestyle choices are unknown.

384. Our livingness is such a great reflection and point of reference for so many who get to see the benefits of those loving choices that we make every day and so then others can be inspired, or at least start asking questions about their own body and what is going on with it.

385. It’s empowering to know that our choices as young people, adults, parents and workers define how we’ll live out the later years in life; could the best retirement/pension preparation and support be looking after ourselves, and not burying emotions?

     1. Great point Susie. How many life plans include a commitment to look after ourselves and express emotions. They usually focus on external goals: career, children, homes, feats of endurance, rarely on righting their relationship with self.

     2. I would say yes…. and also not running with the belief that you need to party while you’re young with no regard for what that means to the body thereafter.

     3. I agree, the best retirement package and pension fund is one that starts from day one in the way we choose to live. It can be so easy to fall into the ‘work hard, party harder’ and ‘live while you are young’ mentality, where the consequences of our actions can be put off to be dealt with another day, but the issue is that they do catch up with us, and often it is in our later years of life which aside from causing the strain on the health service, totally wipes out the potential you have for joy, love, vitality and purpose in your elder years – this idea that abusing the body with excess alcholol, drugs, exhaustion, caffine, emotions etc etc is ‘living while we are young’ but all it does is rob us the potential of living an amazing life from start to end.

     4. Yes, one of the most powerful ‘retirement’ strategies is to continue working. Every extra year of work transforms both the individual’s finances but also the government’s finances for the better.

386. The statistics you have shared Rebecca are staggering but are they staggering enough to wake humanity up to the fact that we are becoming sicker than we have ever been and that is in spite of the amazing advances in medicine over the last few decades. It is being clearly shown that the majority of illness and disease are as a result of our life style choices; our health is being negatively affected by the choices we are making. Therefore it follows that we can being to improve our health simply by making different and more self honouring choices; our health is our responsibility..

     1. Most places now have graphic photos on cigarette packages of the resulting use of that product. Processed meals also have requirements for their packages to list; fat, sugar and salt content in boldly on the front of the box. What if it was required to have warning labels on everything that was a life style choice, to say this product may release endorphins but will shorten your life?

387. We need political systems based around raising the big questions, why we are so sick and what is the sea change needed. And that system will only come from our own personal evolutions that no longer accept anything less than wellbeing that is abundant in joy, vitality and energetic living, taking responsibility to live with deep care.

388. I love what you are saying here about the need for quality rather than quantity. If we did that from an earlier age we would encounter far less problems later in life.

389. Surely the ill health of our elderly is a sign that we are not nurturing or supporting our young or our populations in any age group to take care of their bodies?

390. Is it that we have forgotten true healing and therefore replaced it with prolonging life to avoid looking at that which means taking more responsibility?

391. “A UK study has estimated that the health and social care costs for dementia almost match the combined costs of cancer, heart disease and stroke(6) but the impact of dementia is more than simply financial.” Wow i had no idea about this, this is incredible, it makes sense when we think of how devastating dementia is, it really is time to listen to what Serge has presented, something that we all innately know, and start to live medicine day-to-day so that we can end the epidemic of dementia.

392. Chances are that with a rise of health costs that we cannot but offer the quality of services that we now offer everybody. And if the quality goes down, chances are that conditions become even worse. So we can’t avoid addressing the root causes of all illness and disease: energetic patterns and behaviours that are out of sync with our natural loving essence. With lots and lots of love and understanding, because only through sharing honestly we will go against the trend of the rising trends and costs. We’re worth it.

393. Love it or hate it, science and technology is top of the list to be the main culprit why the quality of our life is going down the pan.

394. ‘How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.’ This is very true, but when we are young it seems unfathomable that we will ever get to being old and seem content to push our bodies to the max. We don’t choose to make the connection to how our choices will impact us as we age.

395. How we live when we are young shapes how we are we we are old,is something we should really be made to get our heads around when we are young. Although I live a relatively healthy life now, cutting out all the harmful things that I did in the past, I still had at least twenty years of total disregard that doesn’t just magically disappear. We need to know that our health is our own responsibility and not an overextended under funded health system.

396. Even though we may have increased our life span, the quality is clearly going down the pan. What is the point of struggling on through an old age rife with disease and totally reliant on a myriad of pills and treatments to get through the day? Our culture to date has been about fixing the ills, but now is the time to look deeper at their real cause and realize that our way forward has to be in personally taking care of how we nurture and nourish our selves. When we introduce proper self-care into our lives (the ‘everything in moderation’ belief is not really self-caring, more like reduced self abuse) it becomes extremely evident that over 90% of our ills are self-induced.

     1. This is a great point Susan that I am aware of with so many older people in the community who have stopped living even though they are still alive.

397. As you point out Rebecca the numbers of elderly will be far greater than those able to look after them. Working in healthcare I can also see how unwell the young are who are coming into the healthcare professions… so where does that leave us? As you suggest, it puts the responsibility of our health on each one of us … our lifestyle choices affect us, and every one around us.

398. The toll is building and the longer we choose to ignore the impact on us the more we will be questioning in years to come.

399. I feel like it will get worse before it gets better given much of our younger society has adopted the YOLO (you only live once) attitude to do life – spend, travel, party now and worry about the future later. If only there was an app that showed what you would look like in 20, 30, 40 years based on current lifestyle. Observing what one’s future could hold may be enough to make changes in one’s life today.

     1. They can see what the sun does with our YOLO lifestyle with an ultraviolet camera and what sun screen can do! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9BqrSAHbTc

400. It’s actually quite scary that we are all aiming to live longer. It is an absolute denial of the natural cycle of life.We’re born, we die, and we are born again. Why resist and why delay?

     1. By fighting the normal cycle of life, are we not still decaying, during our delay and at what cost?

401. A beautifully expressed article Rebecca, very clear, and the truths of our situation as a society abundantly made obvious. It occurs to me that what is often a drive by parents to push their children towards successful careers (which begins early on in their education ) can educate them to disregard their health and well being in that attempt as they strive for a goal. It is the way parents nurture and regard themselves that will give a true role model to their children. It’s how you live not what you do. Education in the integrity with which our daily lives are lived, promoting a respect for the body, is needed on all levels, and in all stages.

402. Some brilliant observations to consider in this article – and I would definitely advocate the opening up of our communities to embrace young and old, maintaining value, responsibility and purpose throughout our lives.

     1. Yes, the mix of young and old would ensure the young learn how to consider life as a cycle and that care and purpose is a large part of our own medicine. Living as a community in a big world inspires great change.

403. These statistics are shocking… ‘approximately 850,000 people estimated to have dementia in UK by 2015’ which is set to rise drastically. Clearly we are facing a huge problem, and as you say Rebecca, the care for our vulnerable members of society need looking at from every different angle. No longer can we rely on the system to have all the answers.

404. These statistics are real, and such an OUCH, Rebecca. Your blog is exposing and very much needed in society. People need to read about the facts of how lifestyle is affecting our bodies and how many of the diseases easily can be prevented. Just like with our own bodies, if we don’t take care of it in every way, disease appears, so will our society experience the effect of a diseased humanity. Like you point out, the healthcare system will be brought to its knees and humanity will be forced to change its ways.

405. It was really interesting to read some of the projects aimed at regaining community reunion and connection to improve lifestyles and health.

406. A great question Rebecca, what will happen if the human life span keeps increasing and we continue to live as we are with the increasing rates of illness and disease? There will need to be a change in the future or the services will be completely unable to cope. They are already at breaking point in some areas. We do need to look at how we are living to be in this state of affairs, we are living completely irresponsibly and expecting to be mended by doctors.

407. I love the examples you share of the elderly mixing with the younger generation – it makes so much sense. When you bring together a child who wants the quality of space with someone and an elderly person who is more inclined to give it to them, then it is a very magical relationship. Late teens to late 40’s and 50’s have so little time these days – they always seem to be busy and so we forget that there are other people who see space and time as very important to simply connect with people.

408. It’s interesting that when we get sick there is no discussion about the choices we were making when we were younger, it’s like there is an attitude that we can just ‘get away with it’ but can we really ‘get away’ with the choices we have made?

409. We know our choices impact our health and well being and yet we arrogantly continue to abuse our bodies. When will we take heed of the current statistics and address with honesty what is going on?

410. When we as a society make quality ahead of quantity then we get to appreciate each moment and not seek another from the point of being unfulfilled. I remember being younger and everyone saying your childhood was the best days of your life; that’s certainly not the case with me as each day becomes more than the previous, of courses it’s not perfect but really what I can feel is if I make the quality of now the focus then there is no need to exist longer if the quality goes.

411. The way we parent generally offers no real support for our kids to step up from young and take responsibility for their choices. While we continue in guilt or sympathy to make their food, clean for them, make their beds, tidy up after them etc., we are asking them to stay small, disempowered and not to relate to commitment to life let alone embody it! When we teach our children from young that we are a team, that they have an equal contribution to make, that their place is very much needed, that they have stupendous worth and moreover support them to express how they feel rather than deny or bury it – we are supporting our kids for life to stay full of purpose with a vital body – through to their elder years and ultimately to pass over.

412. When we separate people into sections as in ‘old’, ‘children’,’ youth’, ‘adult’ and ‘mature’ we stop seeing everyone as the same when it is the choices we all make in the way we live that affects our overall health and wellbeing whatever age we are.

413. Modern medicine and drugs are doing a good job at keeping us alive but it is up to us through our lifestyle choices to keep ourselves in the best possible condition and not eat, drink, smoke and do what ever we like and expect there to be no consequences. The state of things can’t carry on; we either take responsibility now or the future doesn’t look very bright.

414. The writing is on the wall and your references support the fact we know what must be done, but still, we stand by. We know the consequences for sucking the planet dry of oil but we carry on expecting it will last our lifetime and then it becomes someone else’s problem. If we don’t start taking responsibility for how we treat everyone we could follow the dinosaurs and become extinct.

415. Quality of life has become less important over the years. A great example for me is the quality of the products that we use. We tend to want everything ‘cheap’, rather than a quality product. To me this is a symbol of how we are approaching life for ourselves. Accepting to ‘go by’ in life, rather than really living life and feel life in every way it can be felt. This is ALARMOUS! I would suggest a ministry of Joyful Life. Because within this life there’s purpose and responsibility to live life, naturally. Life is not about being born, getting older and die. It’s about continuously live the most loving version of ourselves, forever evolve and share this – by reflection – with everybody we come to meet in our lives.

416. We can no longer pretend that our lifestyle choices have no bearing on our health and that medical interventions will save us; we need to educate from an early age what true health and well-being look and feel like by lived example and not by power point presentations, a flood of words or slogans and overall empty rhetoric.

417. It seems that humanity as a whole has basically just opted to ‘supersize’ everything without considering whether or not it’s actually inherently a good thing. Bigger, longer and generally more are automatically thought of as better but living a longer life is one example of a result of the supersize mentality that needs to be examined more thoroughly.

418. Actually it seems that there is a relatively easy way to deal with the increasing costs of longevity: Increasing the retirement age by only a few years, a typical number mentioned is 2.5 years, actually eliminates the additional cost pressure. However, that would not be enough if we are also getting sicker and the obesity epidemic may be a pointer towards that. However, an interesting statistics is that the percentage of the population that is either obese or smokes or both has remained at 80% in the US since the early 70s and this number has been very stable. Obese people live longer than smokers and therefore have much higher lifetime medical costs, so it will be interesting how things develop.

419. I can only see the dementia rates getting worse as we look to fix the problem rather than address the long term lifestyle behaviours we are seeking. There is so much about lifestyle we are yet to consider and as long as we keep looking for cures as our answer we will be stuck in this bind of spiralling disease.

420. Our bodies don’t let us get away with anything – it may take time but in the end our every choice is exposed!

421. “It is an inevitable fact of life that we will all grow older and yet we like to live as if we will be young forever – in the end we see that our choices of lifestyle catch up with us, and at that point the ripple effects are significant.” We carry such an arrogance from young that we can do whatever we like, in total disregard to our bodies, and think we can get away with it = Not true! Its as we age we feel the impact and consequences of our choices – our bodies put up with so much abuse but in the end they say ‘no more’ – I’m showing you this is how you have been treating me… and it is very humbling.

422. Women especially spend so much time and money “fighting” old age and the advertisements just reinforce these pictures. Imagine if ageing was seen as a different stage of beauty (which it is of course) by us all we would value older people for the wisdom that they have, the spinoffs would be amazing and maybe our communities would be more loving places to live in for all people of all ages.

     1. Yes Anne, women do want to stay looking younger for longer, they are scared of being put on the ‘shelf’. So much better if we honoured our elderly for their lived wisdom, which is invaluable to the whole community. Then women would appreciate their beauty at any age as the inner is what is truly important. And physical aging would be a natural process to be looked forward to not dreaded.

423. If I ever had doubts about if my lifestyle was too healthy, then this blog would straighten me out. It only makes sense that how we live when we are young is what we end up like when we grow old. There is a part of us that just does not want to go there, that wants to make out cancer and disease as some kind of unfortunate accident that is completely unavoidable. Your article is epic, it asks some very needed questions about what we collectively want for the elderly. It also reminds us that we are inevitably heading that way and then obviously our children are one day too going to be elderly. Why do we stop caring? Why do we stop questioning, if our children were all getting an illness that was lifestyle prevented, then would we collectively just accept it and get them shipped away into caring homes? Or would we question the status quo?

424. This is such a great blog Rebecca tackling some very real and in your face issues that need addressing, and the key being how we choose to live from when young, that can precipitate overburdening of the health system and highly reduced quality of life, or responsibly choosing to self care and participate in life from a vitality that comes from being truly responsible for your own health now and in your future.

425. “We cannot solely focus on the older population to solve the issues it faces, we have to involve people of all ages, so that instead of striving for longer life, we foster greater awareness and responsibility for our individual health with the knowing that we will all one day grow old. ”
     This feels key Rebecca. With lifestyle choices being a major contributor to many disease processes, I feel we really do have to look back and take responsibility for the choices we make/made in our younger years. Our choices either support healthy and joyful ageing or a sad decline involving illness and disease which by the way is being noted in younger age groups now with many showing up in my workplace in health with a multitude of ills, not just one or two as in the past. This should be ringing alarm bells for us all.

     1. Yeah gosh when we are young, for the majority, we have no sense of how we are living will affect our later years in so many ways, especially if like myself I just wanted to party nothing mattered much. Having lived that way I can attest to the joy of living with more purpose and love and care for my body. My earlier years cannot be undone but what I build now will support me in the years ahead.

426. There is that good old saying ‘Quality not Quantity’ and this is the key principle in how I am starting to choose to live my life. To be making it all about the quality in what I am choosing and expressing as inspired by Serge Benhayon and the teachings of energetic responsibility.

     1. I once heard the phrase “Quantity has a quality all of its own”. Natalie, you are quite right, quality is still more important.

     2. Yes, a great saying which is so true ‘quality over quantity’, it is the quality of our life lived that counts.

     3. Natalie quality is indeed the key and consistency in quality is the clincher. Recently I noticed that my quality drops whilst I am studying. In an attempt to work through my assignments quickly, I was dropping my quality and so what was I contributing to the whole? I am now focusing, to the best of my ability on quality, knowing that my energetic output gets added to the overall mix.

        1. That is a great observation, wanting to get something finished quickly rather than taking the care and time for it to be done well. It is a significant change in focus and like you share what pool of energy do we add to!

427. We will have the future we choose, we will either heed the warnings and statistics or we will ignore them and walk in to a tsunami of ill health that we have only seen in plagues before in our histories. Over to us.

428. We don’t like to think of our choices stacking up and causing preventable health problems later on, but if we’re going to have any hope of living healthier lives for longer, then the key has to be on the first part – living healthier lives, and learning to make better choices, at a younger age. The ‘longer’ bit is then naturally taken care of. At the moment, it’s all back to front – an obsession with staying young, and in this denial of ageing, an unwillingness to look at our day to day choices and accept that they do stack up, and determine the quality of our later years.

     1. As I have started to take responsibility for my hurts and to look at my lifestyle choices I become more committed to life and have naturally started to feel more vital. Ageing as a process is really carrying your baggage with you, which impacts the body. As I have aged – yes there are the physical signs associated with it – the poorer eye sight, the grey hair and loosening skin etc., however that said I really do look much younger than my 46 years but mainly because I have let go of my hurts and am really taking care of myself from what I eat and when I sleep to how I express making sure that I express as lovingly as possible without holding it back.. There is no perfection here as it is all still unfolding but I do know that the more I do this the more I secure a vitality as I continue to age!

429. Thank you for starting the conversation Rebecca focussing on the quality of the life we are living rather than seeing trying to increase the human life span as desirable whatever the quality of most older people’s lives.

430. This is a great call Rebecca. Older men and women shouldn’t feel the need to apologise for their age, as many do especially in hospitals where they are receiving care. Elderly members of humanity are completely equal to children, working men, women and people of all ages, and it’s time we established a deeply respectful relationship to this part of the community and great quality care system so that everyone is looked after for generations to come.

     1. I agree Susie W and what is also disturbing is the amount of cases we hear in the media where older people are being abused by care workers. This unfortunately is probably just the tip of the iceberg and a consequence of society’s attitude towards the elderly.

     2. Very true Susie and it is those like yourself, with this understanding of the whole of humanity as equal, that will bring the much needed quality of care to our communities.

431. Woah this is huge ‘with approximately 850,000 people estimated to have dementia in UK by 2015.(5) This is enough people to fill the Wembley stadium ten times over’. You have said much here and there is much to discuss, like the quality of life being one of them and as you have shared this is not just for the older generation but for all ages. I also love the fact that you mentioned models in other countries. I am aware of one that is young people been giving cheaper accommodation in homes with the elderly on the condition they interact and take care of the elderly, from a short video clip I watched regarding this it was easy to see it is an enriching experience both for the young and old. And also how nurseries and care homes have been integrated where the children bring joy to the elders and the elders bring their time and lived experience to the children which equates to .. magic. So it is great these things have started to happen. With the many things I have recently heard being spoken about in the news with regards to our future – 21,000 mental health workers needed to be trained in the UK because of the increase of people with mental support and the complete lack of support that is there for them, the retirement age changing to be changed from 65 to 68 and the really scary ‘editing’ process re deleted genes in foetuses made possible and these are just a very few things. Yes these conversations do definitely need to be had but more so action taken to respond to the change in our current quality of life to reduce much of what has already been predicted. One such organisation that is wholly dedicated to this is Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.

432. Rebecca with what you share there is so much to ponder on. What are we going to do as the population lives longer and how are we going to take the strain of the government to support the elderly. It is definitely a topic that needs to be discussed, as its how we live in our younger years will support less illness and diseases as we get older so we are not dependent on others, then it is time these topics are discussed and live style changes made.

433. Although I myself may be at awe of the modern ways that it is possible to keep human beings functional and alive for longer than before, and I may marvel at various technologies that offer clever ways of doing things that we were not able to dream of a few years ago, I do often sit back and wonder: is all of this truly supportive of our evolution? Or are we just patting ourselves on the back because humanity keeps finding more and more sophisticated and distracting ways to continue ignoring the misery and lovelessness it is choosing?

     If we stop ignoring the elephant in the room, the question becomes: is a longer life with more technologies and gadgets truly a sign of our advancement, when people’s health is deteriorating both physically and psychologically, when more and more individuals are so devastated in life that suicide rates keep rising, when most of us are so lost to ourselves that abuse, discord and wars are rampant in our societies?

     We need to stop and re-assess. It is not all adding up.

434. There is a theory that if our life expectancy was like this many years ago we would have had the same issues and conditions and not much is different. I say that’s baloney. We have now got people age 50 with dementia… Something is going on and we need to stop and look at it. Not plug in and shut down to it.

435. Whilst the focus stays on the quantity of years lived as a marker that we are doing OK, we slowly and painfully move towards where we actually need to be, a place where instead the focus is on the quality of life lived.

     1. When we stop looking at everything as something we have to ‘defeat, we shall stop the illusion of trying to impose our individualised will on the whole of life – including our longevity and death – and start to appreciate that there is grace, healing and evolution available when we flow harmoniously with a greater will aligned to the totality of the Universe we are inherently a part of.

436. Thank you, Rebecca, you have raised many points with regard to ageing around the world and one factor I have observed as an elder is that the company pension I currently enjoy is in an interesting position with more people on pensions than are currently employed by the company. I’m not sure how that works out financially, but I always assumed those in work supported those who have left work so somewhere along the line, the maths doesn’t work out.

437. I agree Rebecca – we are so obsessed with ageing or should I say not ageing and the choices we are willing to make in order to not take responsibility for what is now unfolding. The ‘Quality’ with which we live is what it is all about and when this is our focus and our ‘Quality’ is about love first then every thing else will fall into place.

438. Reading this blog made me realise how deeply we care about ourselves that we spend so much time and money into our health system. To me, this is to deeply appreciate. What I find more difficult to see is that most beings I know feel victim of life and that all the (chronic) diseases are ‘part of growing old(er)’. That they aren’t preventable, that we don’t have a say. Which isn’t true, we do have a say. A big one through the daily choices we make. Why don’t we make this part of our everyday life. To share with each other how we feel, what we’re learning, how we don’t want all the violence, aggression, bullying, war etc. in life. That we’re open to seek true support. Life is not about living longer, but about enjoying it.

439. There doesn’t appear to be much joy in growing old from what I can tell, chatting to the elderly,
     they get to reflect back on their lives and see that they didn’t not live as they wanted to and if they had their life again they are sure they would live it differently.Surely then we need to look at the way we are living if the elderly are telling us their life wasn’t it.

440. Quality of life is an essential key factor here and the responsibility that we each take in the way that we live our life… Universal Medicine’s presentations on energetic quality, integrity and responsibility are paradigm shifting in terms of the depth of true health and well-being that they support for all equally at every stage of our lives.

441. We wouldn’t have so many hangups about getting old and dying if we chose to live more simply and lovingly and listened to our bodies, as they hold great wisdom and know exactly when it is time to move on.

442. What struck me from this sharing was the extent to which we abuse our bodies. I live in the UK which is considered a 1st world country, and yet we are in utter crisis when it comes to the state of the healthcare system. What is going on for us to ignore the signs of the body and live a lifestyle that triggers illness and disease?

443. ‘We cannot solely focus on the older population to solve the issues it faces, we have to involve people of all ages, so that instead of striving for longer life, we foster greater awareness and responsibility for our individual health with the knowing that we will all one day grow old.’ Well said, Rebecca. When we are young very few of us acknowledge that we will grow old and pass over one day, but when we can accept the fact that life is lived in cycles and is its own cycle we won’t be so afraid of ageing and will be able to be responsible for it from very young.

444. As we get older we begin to give up on our bodies and accept that the ailments we have are caused by old age. We need to change the way we see our bodies from a much earlier age, and individually take responsibility for looking after and caring for ourselves before we reach an age where giving up and handing our bodies over to the health system seems to be the only option.

445. Working in a GP surgery, I see a lot of people queuing to pick up their bags of weekly pills to keep them well, and it feels sad to see people quite stressed when they need extra medication to go on holiday or when there are changes to the medication. There feels a need to evaluate the quality of life at different decades, and focus on working at how we can keep ourselves well, rather than focus on extending the longevity of life with poorer quality.

446. It’s pretty scary how we hold on to life no matter what. Why would we want to live longer if our health is in a mess? And who wants to live for years on medication? We give far too much value to quantity without valuing the importance of quality.

447. “Our focus on a healthy and successful life being one with an ever-increasing life span needs a shift instead to the quality of life lived – not just physical health but the wellbeing of the population.” I so agree Rebecca. If our National Health Services focussed more on this aspect of the nation’s health – and supported life-style medicine as the way to go, it is possible costs would then reduce for the NHS – and the tax payer. Articles and experiential blogs by students of The Way of the Livingness have shown how making different life-style choices has resulted in the vanishing of many illnesses, because they have addressed the root cause of disease. ‘Prevention is better than cure’ has long been a much quoted epithet. Why is prevention not focussed on? Aargh, there is not much money in it for pharmaceutical companies, she commented wryly…..

448. Thank you Rebecca for this thorough and very clear blog. I agree there is far too much focus on prolonging and extending life at all costs in medicine regardless of the quality of life lived. This needs to shift in the future.

449. “By making changes in the way the whole population approaches lifestyle choices, we can improve overall health with the understanding that it will produce generations who age, with the potential to have less propensity for such large volumes of complex illness and disease.” What a great perspective on how the future can be, a future where its not about living longer but one where the quality, decency and love of life with real responsibility shines through.

450. Great blog Rebecca. I am currently doing a course on dementia, and even this illness, although not fully understood, starts decades before the symptoms appear. There are also many lifestyle choices that significantly reduce the risk of a person getting dementia, so again this points to how powerful and important the choices are that we make in early life.

451. Often we hear of reports where the elderly are living longer but this does not fill me with joy at the thought, mainly because the image we have of the elderly and the lives they live seem quite depressing. I personally do not see the point if the quality of life is not there, and from my experience with working with the elderly, I saw a lot of lonely (mostly ladies) people waiting to die.

452. It is awesome to read that some countries are introducing incentives to bring people together, but also sad to read that it has to be initiated because it is not our current way of living. Currently so many people live seperate lives and living in isolation, this means we have forgotten what it is like to let people in, to open to the fact that our family is not just limited to people who shares the same surname or through marriage but our whole community is also our family.

453. Asian societies and many others have treated the aged with respect. The elders were the living history of the people. Most third world countries honour their elders, so why does the large wealthy countries discard them as useless burdens?

454. Scientists at one university (1) acutely aware life-style changes lessen the risk of dementia are unable to understand why people, knowing the risks, resolutely refuse to make changes until there is a crisis and are forced to. One explanation given for this is the delay between action and consequence. Unlike what happens if you burn your hand, you feel it immediately and most people do not repeat the action. Yet we know people often feel the consequence of their choices immediately (first cigarette, hang-over, over-eating) but usually override these. I see hundreds of people dulled down by lack of exercise, excessive eating and drinking to the extent they’re no longer connected to or feel their bodies. They are walking time bombs with illness and disease seeding if not already present in early, mid-life or old age. The scientist’s suggest we make changes mid-life. From my understanding and yours Rebecca, this is too late for many: the rot has already set in. Universal Medicine supports us to understand the cause and consequences of self-abuse and neglect and offers a truer way of living based on self care, love and appreciation. The Way of the Livingness as presented by Serge Benhayon, is life-long, life-style changes, starting when children are young, but equally relevant at any age where phenomenal changes can be the result of a commitment to truly heal ourselves.

     http://www.utas.edu.au/wicking/preventing-dementia

455. I’m always inspired by people who buck trends. One example reported last week was of a man a supermarket worker who retired aged 93, and only because he acknowledged he was getting slower. When interviewed there was a beautiful quality to him of one who loved life and being of service to his community. Dementia and chronic ill-health in old age is not inevitable, it happens because we neglect ourselves.

456. We are in grave trouble indeed if one disease alone is enough to cripple a developed country’s health care system. Yet given the level of disregard so many of us live in – the lack of true care and responsibility taken for our own lives and health – well, it will probably take something as momentous as this to force us to sit up and take notice.

457. Perhaps it’s time as a humanity we focus on the quality… connection within … and less glorifying the quantity of years lived in a body. Could quality of life that connecting inwardly brings to the body have an impact of harmony, health status and illness on the body? Perhaps the next generation of public health is calling to have a foundation in body connection and awareness to make a difference on the health of community, locally and globally.

458. “It is an inevitable fact of life that we will all grow older and yet we like to live as if we will be young forever – in the end we see that our choices of lifestyle catch up with us…” – quite Rebecca and it is the disrespect of the body and its physicality crammed with beliefs and ideals about ourselves, our age, where we’re at in life, that push us to then push our bodies into states of disregard that end up with ill health in later elder years to make old-age the ‘horror’ it is [regarded] for so many. When life is lived in respect of decent self-caring, loving lifestyle choices irrespective of a deteriorating physical frame, wrinkles and so on, old-age is the joy as nature intended for all the wisdom that that old body has lived to share.

459. An awesome read Rebecca… can this be published – everywhere! As a society we really do need to wake up to where we are all at, and the fact that “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.” And this is not just physically, but emotionally, mentally, our behaviours and attitudes all come with us. It is up to each one of us to be responsible for the change that needs to happen.

460. You raise so many jaw dropping and much needed points Rebecca. The majority of our years are ‘elderly’ years and yet must of us live in a society that worships youth. It’s time we began focussing on quality of life- the quantity will then take care of itself.

461. If the human life span keeps increasing and we continue to see each other as separate individuals rather than part of the collective whole, then it’s going to get very ugly indeed as we all wrangle over whose responsibility it is to look after ‘everyone else’.

462. We’re living longer, yet the quality of life becomes more and more poor and certainly less vital and clear. There are so many people who discuss life in a gossiping, blaming, shallow and / or irresponsible way that life cannot but become quite boring, disengaging and tiring if not exhausting. Our will to live our lives based on forever growing loving choices is our own right. If we don’t choose so, we’re lessening ourselves. To me this is very sad. Although I’m learning that people are to exercise their free will, regardless of how it affects me or anyone else. I’m responsible for myself and the more I choose responsibility, the more I’m able to hold others in love equally so.

463. ‘It is an inevitable fact of life that we will all grow older and yet we like to live as if we will be young forever…’
     The images of old age that are sold to us as a society paint a very dismal and disempowered picture, so it’s little wonder so many do their utmost to avoid it.
     But if there was understanding and acceptance of the fact that the quality of life we choose to lead and live in this life directly affects the quality we are born into in the next life, perhaps we’d start to see a reversal in the annihilating trends and cost blowouts which are destined to bring economies to their knees in the future.
     If we truly understood the purpose and value of the cycle of life, the quality of our choices throughout our lives are likely to be different.
     It would have to be one of the greatest evils in this world, the distortion, bastardisation and debasing of the meaning of old age. While we focus on the pictures of diminished function and value of the human form, we deny society of the true meaning, wisdom and custodial role of eldership.

464. We champion that people are living longer, yet we do not consider how they are living and what quality of life they have in their final decades. Is it truly living if we are medicated, drugged and artificially sustaining life in a body that is carrying so much illness and disease. I can’t help but wonder what our lifespans would really be without the aid of medicine and pharmaceuticals to keep us going. Championing living longer is a smokescreen to deflect that we are not living well, that as a species we are sick and would not survive in the wild. We would be picked off by predators, be unable to reproduce and would be heading toward extinction. We abuse the body we live in – feed it junk food, alcohol etc, we do not care for it as the precious and amazing vehicle it is, too little or too much exercise, not enough sleep, over emotional, harsh and abusive ways – then we act surprised when it fails and expect a pill to fix it so we can continue in exactly the same vein. Time has come for us to face the facts that while we may be living longer we are in fact instead dying longer – artificially extending our life with medications is a slow form of death. Instead of damaging our body through our lifestyle or medication should be to care for our body, treat it right both physically and from an energetic perspective so it does not become clogged up with the excessive way we live which brings on a multitude of symptoms and ill health conditions that we then need to prolong ourselves in by championing being on a cocktail of medications just to live longer in that devitalised and ill state. We need to take responsibility for how we treat ourselves and the end results that produces – poor health is not some random act or luck of the draw – it is predicted by how we live. I would rather see our life spans remain as they are but the quality and vitality of our final years be what increases.

     1. “Time has come for us to face the facts that while we may be living longer we are in fact instead dying longer” – well said, Rachel. What’s the point? It’s about time we look at how we live in every way, so that there’s a joy and a sense of quality of life right to the very end.

465. Brilliant article. For a long time I considered the elderly a bit of a nuisance. I know that sounds pretty horrible, but I also know this is a common feeling amongst society because we’ve basically been feeding it for a long time. In the same way we are fed that we should look and behave a certain way, we have also been fed that youth is where it’s at and that getting old is less than desirable. This attitude is, in my opinion, the biggest contributing factor to why we have the problems mentioned above, today. Before that of course comes the attitudes to ourselves, our lack of appreciation of who we are and what we bring in earlier life which would naturally lead to a decline in health. If we can’t respect ourselves, we can not expect others to respect us.

466. It is ironic that our elderly are living artificially longer whilst our children are going to die younger than their parents; a first in the history of mankind. So out of kilter are we with food and indulgences. We really do need to stop and truly change our ways.

467. What a super informative blog Rebecca, bringing the focus back to responsibility or more so the lack of and the repercussions of this. It’s another case of dealing with the end result without going to the core issue and healing it from there.

468. It shows how much we have reduced our true measure of well being to simply just basic function when there is so much focus placed on our ability to live older lives for as long as our body can muster instead of the real enjoyment lived in those years. When I have been in an aged care facility while I was younger I saw so many just existing and not truly enjoying their situation. It was not inspiring to see and made me wonder why we are accepting that old age has to be like this?

     1. So true Joshua, why is society accepting this sub-standard marker of ‘old-age’ when there is a deeper, richer, more meaningful and more vital way of life available to us all, through till our last breath, should we choose it.

469. ‘Our focus on a healthy and successful life being one with an ever-increasing life span needs a shift instead to the quality of life lived – not just physical health but the wellbeing of the population. Much of the current burden on the NHS’s time and funds comes from illness and disease that result from life style choices and these health problems only become worse and more complicated in older years.’ This absolutely needs to be presented again, and again and again! Until we collectively take responsibility for our life style choices and understand the burden we place on each other by not doing so we will continue down the slippery slope of everything that comes with this – ill health, depression, financial hardship, relationship breakdown – and so on.

470. The impact of dementia is almost brushed aside as the prevalence of it in old age increases (partly to not face this looming issue, but partly also to underplay the fact that it is a disability, and along with disability comes the need for interrelated support systems – An expense and a network that will increase and need developing. There will be a critical point, but we cannot put off any longer bringing true health education to our young people that they might make the choices in life that lead them to a different quality of old age.

     1. You touch on a really important point here that as certain illnesses like obesity and dementia become more and more common they are accepted as the new normal and we accommodate to them and adapt to live with them, which means accepting a general reduced quality of life, rather than stopping and saying that these are not normal and do not belong in our natural quality of living as human beings and then seeking the root cause of these illnesses.

471. Life expectancy is increasing – but life quality and the amount of illnesses are increasing, the key to observe is that throughout all of our life there are ways to live which are truly harmonious and even though sometimes illness and disease are an unwanted kick up the bottom- they help us in many levels to take stock of our ways and consider moving on.

472. This is a great point that I often make to the young . . . .”How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old” . . . this message really has to get out there as most young people live like there is no tomorrow. They trash their bodies without any thought of the years to come. We are only young for a short time. The bulk of our life can be spent being between the ages of 40 to 80 years old.

473. Spot on Rebecca, the current trend is unsustainable, not just in the UK but in every developed country it would seem. We have our attention so firmly placed on longevity that we have completely lost sight of what quality of life actually means. That is because we have allowed our standards of vitality and wellbeing to be so eroded that we accept a very poor state of actual health to be the norm now, using modern medicine to continue on in this dis-abled state.

     1. Yes Jenny, our focus has to change from living longer, to living with quality and vitality. There is a huge difference. So many of the older generation I know are living with chronic illnesses and are on numerous medications. As Rebecca mentions in her blog, many of our conditions are preventable by simply making different lifestyle choices.

        1. Yes it seems a simple equation to make the obvious lifestyle changes, but the fact that as a society in general, we are not making those choices is reflecting something deeper still, as the impulse is not to take care of ourselves. Unless we each address what underlies, those choices will remain as detrimental to our health as ever.

474. I had a discussion today with a friend about elderly parents and the signs of dementia, in this conversation we discussed that there are ways of living and food choices that can be made to slow, or even arrest the signs of dementia. But what we are faced with is the person’s deeply ingrained lack of self worth and refusal to support themselves. This is the true illness and to address the very roots of dementia, we need to support our young to know themselves intimately, to feel their value in our world, then true arrest of this and many other diseases will be begun.

475. An article to be printed in mainstream newspapers.
     To add, we have now Doctors who are stepping forward and sharing the facts of how our diets affect our bodies, and the powers that be do whatever can be done to silence them. If we really want to begin to address at the very least our body care and diet, we have to support those that are truthfully presenting on this subject.

476. It is ironic that we are obsessed with living longer and this is heralded as human advancement. And this goes parallel to an anti-aging mentality where pretty much everything in advertising is about looking and acting youthful, and very little honouring and embracing the grace and wisdom that can be accessed as you get older.

     A peep in our hospitals and old people’s homes can easily show that we are not living the final stage of our life with joy, dignity and grace. This is an area that very clearly needs addressing. I love the clarity, responsibility and inspiration offered by this blog.

     1. I agree – there is much to be said about the perpetuation of the youthful ideal in the media, however at the end of the day they are the supply for the demand we put out – our way of living and our mentality around growing old is demanding the supply, which is then supported and sustained by it. If we change things at the root, then the media will soon catch up and realise that we no longer need feeding images of eternal youth but instead the natural beauty of all ages of a life lived with care and responsibility

        1. A great point Rebecca. It is important to realise that the media and marketing is always a reflection of a mentality we are already running with and never the cause of it. Otherwise we end up in a blame game and will sidestep the awareness that we are actually an active contributor to the whole picture.

           I love the phrase “the natural beauty of all ages of a life lived with care and responsibility”. So beautifully confirming. It could be a gorgeous caption or title for something.

        2. Articles such as this represent true journalism – something of which much more is required for the truth to be exposed further more in society bringing back a real purpose to media.

        3. I agree Michael, media can have true purpose to bring awareness to the world of how things are and supporting us to see how we can change things

477. Brilliant blog Rebecca. From the statistics you’ve shared, it is obvious we cannot keep going like this. It is apparent to me that the way many people are choosing to live is having a toll on their health, our healthcare system and their quality of life. I am seeing more and more people living separate lives and I feel the responsibility and the way we look after ourselves and our elderly needs to change.

478. It is rare to see the word joyful in the same sentence as old age yet that is exactly what old age can be. To achieve this however we need to deal with our hurts and embrace that we are ageing and will die eventually. The denial of all this is what keeps us stuck in old beliefs and ideals about ageing.

     1. Elizabeth, that’s lovely ’embrace that we are ageing’ I can feel how freeing it is to accept that this is inevitable and to choose the quality we live in until this point.

479. Is this not one of the major concerns now? Knowing that this is a communal concern and choosing to make it someone else’s problem that we know won’t go away.

480. Some items are self correcting. A population that is getting sicker eventually can be expected to have a falling life expectancy like the UK population for the last two years and white males in the US. This is not the best way to keep health care costs down but medicine can only do so much.

481. This is a powerful piece of writing Rebecca and a message that needs to be heard throughout society and in the area of health and social care.

482. This blog is an absolute treasure chest, with so many gems and pure gold that we need en masse to consider more deeply. One (of many) points that stood out was that it isn’t enough to look at the ratio’s of working people / people requiring care rising in 2040 as something that doesn’t affect me. In 2040 I will be in my early 50’s, by 2060 I’ll be in my 70’s. How I live now is my responsibility of: do I become one of the burdens in that statistic or be an agent of changing those numbers?

483. It is true we all live as if we are going to live forever and old age is something in the distant future. I volunteer in a hospital and there are long term elderly patients in the wards because they have multiple ailments and there is not the support to send them home and there are no spaces in care homes. I love the way that you have looked at this growing problem from all sides, and included all ages in how best to move forward.

484. “Our focus on a healthy and successful life being one with an ever-increasing life span needs a shift instead to the quality of life lived – not just physical health but the wellbeing of the population.” I so agree Rebecca. What is the point of living longer if the quality of life is nil? What choices do we make for ourselves – well before we get ‘too old’ – to live with quality now in our lives everyday?

485. The ‘success’ or ‘evolution’ of humanity is always measured by life-expectancy. Whilst this remains the barometer we will always be lost. It should be scrapped entirely – never spoken about again. If we start to measure life by ‘quality’, ‘vitality’ and ‘true health’, then we will see the real picture and have to have the humility to accept the mess that we are in. From that place, and toward the goal of these new measurements, we will then start to make truer choices that genuinely support.

486. Rebecca a great blog, that reminds me of how when I was younger I was afraid of dying, of missing out and everything about me would have said it’s about how we can live longer. Yet what I missed in that was multi folded – firstly I ignored the state of health that people live with or better put exist with and I had not considered the topic of quality. Today when I look I can see that life is more about the quality rather than the quantity, the more I commit to quality the more amazing each moment is.

487. Spot on Rebecca. ‘Our entire social perspective of ageing most definitely needs a seismic shift’ of focus away from living longer for the sake of living longer to the quality of the life lived.

488. Yes we can bring this change together starting with the foundation of how we live, being responsible for our daily, moment by moment choices.Thank you Rebecca for opening up this conversation.

489. Taken at its most simplistic level the article presents the absolute fact that a gigantic proportion of our illness and disease comes about from our own life-style choices. If we really ponder this, it is so outrageously irresponsible. We reprimand our children for not keeping their rooms tidy…..yet look at the choices we, as adults, are making and the consequences that they have. Our arrogance beggars belief.

490. ‘Just as we all want our children to grow up to have successful careers and relationships, would we not equally want them to grow up and have a respectful, active and joyful old age?’ Great question Rebecca and one that is generally not considered by parents of young children, in fact by all of us. It’s no good being irresponsible about our diet and lifestyle when we are young and then thinking somehow “it won’t happen to us” or “it won’t happen to our children” and sweeping the reality of consequences under the carpet.That doesn’t work. We need to wake up now and begin to make the changes now whatever the media or the companies who are selling unhealthy things are telling us.

491. I love the Finnish and Seattle examples you describe Rebecca, bringing the younger and older generations together. It brings support to the elderly and wakens the awareness of younger people to realise how they are living will impact their older age too. I had a work experience student ( who smoked ) shadowing me treating a lady with end stage chronic lung disease at work, ( and this lady very beautifully expressed how her behaviour of being a smoker had caused her illness) . It was a shocking but a great revelation for the student to see how her choices now are going to affect her well being in the future.

492. Rebecca, I love your curiosity to know more about all life, people of all ages and share your knowledge with us. You are a living example of a young woman who loves and cares for herself and lives now as she would want to live in old age.

493. ‘How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old.’ Rebecca, in this pearl of wisdom rests the solution and problem. Unknowingly for many, simple choices made early in life sow the seeds that determine quality of life in old age..

494. A fabulous and very important blog. Indeed why would we want to live longer if our state of health is not good. The care needs to start way before our older years, and responsibility for our own health through our lifestyle choices is the way to take the strain off the healthcare system. Ill health, and longevity with ill health puts a strain on everyone.

495. Oh my goodness this is absolutely mental and very sad “dementia is one of the leading causes of disability in later life, with approximately 850,000 people estimated to have dementia in UK by 2015.(5) This is enough people to fill the Wembley stadium ten times over” !!!!! that’s so many people, I didn’t even realise that – not to mention how many other people it affects.

496. A well researched and well-written article Rebecca – the escalating statistics for various forms of illness and disease are startling and a wake-up call for all to consider the detrimental effect of ill choices in the early years of life that are now reflected in the older generation.
     “How we live when we are young shapes how we will be when we are old”.

497. Living longer but not living longer well… it’s a depressing future in many ways if we fail to reverse this trend.

498. This is super refreshing to read an article that is lifting the sheet off some long overdue issues that we have been deeply ignoring for way to long. Lately I have been witness to observing elderly people ageing that are not in denial, not resisting but fully embracing of it. So inspiring and making this a normal everyday conversation is beautiful.

499. Life is about purpose and re-connecting to our innermost so that everyone and all aspects of life get our fullness, our love and our reflection. This does not require a position description listing age but it does ask each of us to be energetically responsible and to live with energetic integrity and this is possible at all stages of our life span.

500. Great blog Rebecca! It is slowly being recognized as you have shown, We are, our choices and life styles are what is killing us! But, we continue to sweep these facts under the rug. Why have we historically allowed the world fall around us before we see the reality of what we have chosen!

501. My feeling is that the attitude in our western society concerning the growing elderly is firstly no one wants to get older but most people are looking forward to retirement as they think that is paradise. In truth not enough focus is given on the years in between, the working years where we can learn to work with another attitude and to take deep care for ourselves, also to understand that work is not a nuisance and just there to earn money for living. Also, like you have mentioned Rebecca, that the youth is educated in a way to learn to take responsibility and that endless computer gaming and other checking out tools like drugs etc. are being exposed more. Another important thing would be to give more support to parents with children concerning their upbringing and education.
     There can be lots of changes if we as a society are willing to see the necessity for it.

502. Thank you for writing this so needed article Rebecca. To me it is the denial of becoming old and the not appreciating of the elderly in our societies that is at the root of many of the major issues you have described here. When we just watch and do nothing to stop this, not only the figures may become true, but how will our society then look like, just in daily life. When the NHS goes bankrupt actually society goes bankrupt as this is the means we have introduced in our societies to take care for the people that need help. And when we are not able to do that anymore, how then will that feel, what will that do to us as a humanity? Perhaps we have to let it come to this point before we truly understand that we all have a responsibility in this, a responsibility to be there as of young, to understand that how we live our lives in our youth will be taken with us into our elder life and be the basis for how our society is when we are old. In fact we are the creators of our own future, we only have to take responsibility for that.

503. “…Research is showing us that around 90-95% of cancers have their root cause in environment and lifestyle, such as diet, stress, smoking etc.(7)…” This is an eyebrow raising statistic, which begs the question why is it that we are choosing indulgences from our lifestyle?… What are we saying ‘no’ to when we are saying ‘yes’ to the alternative which is smoking, sugar, excess food consumption, alcohol or drugs?

504. Brilliant, brilliant Rebecca. When we look at a problem, an issue, it is so clear it is not just one or a few seemingly affected areas and people that need fixing, it is everything about life that needs re-evaluating, and it is about everyone. And we can only start from where we are, and starting a conversation, instead of choosing ignorance and/or denial is very much needed, and maybe we all start to re-evaluate what life is all about.

505. When blood families have a picture or ideal to be nice to each other in the false name of “respect” and “love”, we are holding back each other in awareness. The commitment to truly living love with ourselves will also open up this commitment to our families, and to rebuild our awareness together by starting to express honestly with each other. This begins to break down the barrier and protection of being “nice” and “good”, to allow care and appreciation to be the foundation of familial relationships. This is what quality is about, we can feel the depth and the realness of such a relationship, rather than the card-boardy and superficial front of what is niceness, and in no doubt, this quality we have with ourselves and with each other impacts greatly on our health.

506. We benefit from being all in it together, that’s why the various new ways of housing elderly with young people and combining kindergartens with nursing homes works so well. We can offer so much to one another and that’s what we thrive with, our connections to one another and feeling part of and committed to life and each other.

507. Brilliant article Rebecca. In your last paragraph you mention the focus on youth and anti-ageing in advertising, this is true but it’s solely a focus on physical appearance, it’s not even caring towards the actual health and wellbeing of the youth. I agree that we need to bring equal care to all age groups, and that there is much to learn regarding how the span of our whole life and our lifestyle affects our health and wellbeing at each age. We can also learn by how we are currently ageing and the low quality of life this can bring, and this needs to be applied back to youth onwards as both prevention of illness, and increasing the quality of wellbeing and joy in life.

508. Super read Rebecca and super question for pondering too — “Just as we all want our children to grow up to have successful careers and relationships, would we not equally want them to grow up and have a respectful, active and joyful old age?” – absolutely yes, because just like today shapes our tomorrow and so how we pass over shapes what we come back and return to. Because if what was before [and which was not working] doesn’t change then that cycle continues to repeat life after life.

509. Our single minded focus on going faster, living longer and getting stronger misses the point of life. If we really want to make it about numbers why not instead focus on how many people in this world have truly Loving relationships instead? How many of us truly feel free and at ease in ourselves? How many of us get up each day, glad to be awake and part of the human race? Surely it’s this quality of life that is the key not the length of time we are alive. Thank you for highlighting this Rebecca.

510. An amazing read Rebecca, we do need to come back to quality for what is longevity if we do not have quality and we need to look at our wider societies and not just the old and ask what do we value? And do we live in a way which encourages joy at all ages, or more pertinently have we considered that is in fact possible? There is much for all of us to do as a society to support our elderly but all to look at how all of us live …. our elderly and sick are the canaries in the coalmine for us all.

511. Great blog Rebecca bringing an awareness of how it starts from when younger and how we choose to live our lives, and how we as a global community need to be addressing these issues together as it affects us all. There is much to be said for basic simple self loving care and respect for ourselves that will support us to live a truer and more naturally healthier life, as this is taking responsibility for what we bring to humanity as a complete package for life from young to older age.

512. I watched the final programme of a series of I think 6, which broadcast the test results of a health and wellbeing initiative, of a sample of elderly people in a care home in Bristol UK. For 6 weeks they had a preschool class come share the day with them. They simply shared activities. The results to that same health and well-being questionnaire, when re-taken at the end of the initiative, showed varied and I must say quite impressive improvements, from increased mobility to decreased depression, and increased desire to interact and connect back to life and others. The latter being the most significant as the relationships formed with the preschoolers brought a quality to their lives and meaning to their days that had a significant affect on their lives. It showed without doubt that to keep our elderly within community rather than ‘farming them away’ has a huge benefit not only for the elderly, but for everyone. We all have so much to learn and enjoy by maintaining the community as a whole, young, old and everyone in between, together.

513. I agree with your sharing here Rebecca! We need to really consider just how to manage our aging situation. If we all understood that quality of life is so much more important than the length of time we live. Also the fact of reincarnation is an important one that needs addressing or at least being spoken about as a natural part of our life..

514. Our obsession with youth has created a world where we are walking one way whilst looking backwards trying to keep a glimpse of the youth we once lived. By doing this we are totally unprepared for ageing once we lose sight of youth completely and finally turn around and are faced with where we truly are. It’s not surprising that at this point so many give up on life feeling like it is over, and then face the inevitable deterioration and decline that accompanies this. To make the choice to stand and face what is coming towards us, to prepare ourselves and be fit for life, brings with it a vitality that not even many of our young people can claim to live.

515. In the denial of ageing we disrespect and dishonour our elders with devastating consequences. So often the elderly are regarded as the inconvenient generation who just take up resources and time, and yet as you point out Rebecca, is this really what we want for our children, our loved ones, for ourselves, for anyone?

     1. No Lucy, we actually do not want that, in essence none of us. But the interesting point in this is why do people make the choices they make. Why do people, we call the intelligent species on planet earth, for instance choose to smoke, or drink alcohol while we all know from science that it is harming us. Why choose the same intelligent people for hectic and busy lives that introduces havoc and stress in their bodies. Could it be that we are driven by given ideals and beliefs which are in ignorance of who we in essence all are and with that have introduced all the issues we currently are facing in our lives?

516. There are so many great points in here Rebecca and it is such an important topic, my feeling is that one of the ways to address the issue is to stop the prolonging life through medication when all quality is lost. We lose ourselves in this idea that it’s one life and we must make the absolute most of it, but as you say, would it not be better to address the way we live through our whole life and then we would have less need for 24hour care in our last days, and those last years would be much more functional and less burdensome for all.

517. There is no doubt that we need to foster greater awareness and responsibility for our individual health to reduce the burden that will otherwise be placed on a system already bursting at the seems. However I was touched by the programs or experiments going on around the world that show us that there is another way than the current model we have settled for of nursing homes that do not offer the dignity, love, connection, care or respect that we deserve to live in our latter years… but also recognise that these are qualities that we need to live and offer ourselves first, not just expect later.

     1. Yes and the interesting thing is that models of true care can be considerably lower cost as the practitioners can be more effective.

518. What a great article and we keep seeing the fact that these days we are becoming more and more narrow focused. When you only look at part of what is going on for a person, yourself or even a generation then you only take in part of the picture. As the article is saying if we look at how long we are living then you would say we have gotten somewhere and are successful or better off and yet if you look across the board we are far far more unwell. So what is going on, what are we not seeing in our focus on a part? We aren’t seeing the full picture and to get that full picture there needs to be a change in how we live. What change? We need to open up to seeing even the little things not isolated, in other words if you live you life just focused on parts for instance, if all you do is focus on leaving the house by 8.30am and nothing else well then you will after a while see that there have been things left or ignored. It maybe your children, your pets, your extended family, the cleanliness of the house or similar, something will be less. It maybe a stretch as an example but what I am saying here is that there is a direct link in how you live to then what you see. If we are to open up then we will need to choose to do that everywhere.

     1. A great analogy. The question is – how bad does it have to get before we are forced into making grass-root changes?

        1. Great question and one that is only answered by the individual. It would seem no matter how wayward the world, country or town gets we only look if we are directly affected or personally affected. When things hit home like this we are more inclined to ask what is going on or we are bought to our knees so to speak and then ask more questions. Needless to say there is a part of us that delays and delays any change and it is possibly the same part that divides our lives into segments or parts. If we know the impact we have on each other and how we are connected then you don’t need to look too far to see we are walking down a road that only leads to more of the same. It is time to stop before we have to stop and have a look at the quality of life we are living, I’m not talking about incomes, houses, cars or food, I am talking about quality of relationships with ourselves and others. This is where our true quality of life is born, from the quality of our relationships.

        2. Hear you loud and clear Ray. However, I was very struck by what I heard from a cancer consultant the other day. Apparently after a patient has been diagnosed with cancer and had the treatment, there is, an average period of three months in which they are open to changing the way they live. After three months, almost all of them have reverted to their old patterns. So it seems that, even when we are shaken to the core, we still refuse to make the very needed changes.

519. “Just as we all want our children to grow up to have successful careers and relationships, would we not equally want them to grow up and have a respectful, active and joyful old age?” It seems like this latter part is a forgotten one as there is not as much focus on this part of our lives, the gap has been left by all of us and private companies are filling this gap and seizing the opportunity to profit from it.

520. I absolutely agree that we need to change totally. As an ageing person it becomes very obvious that youth is the premium commodity that everyone is told to be, hardly any older people appear in adverts and if they do they are airbrushed within an inch of their lives! Even the average person uses filters on their photos so they don’t have wrinkles. This is just one aspect of ageing that if it was embraced more and seen more in the day to day advertising etc would make ageing more normal and valued. Currently it is not valued at all, no wonder everyone is checked out and no longer mentally sharp, it is perceived as something that everyone should avoid. Utter madness really, when its actually something that could be embraced and savoured.

     1. I agree Vanessa. I overheard a conversation just yesterday in regard to this, as in a desire for there to be more young people about. Although the conversation was not directed at me, as a woman in her late fifties I felt some unease in my body at this comment, and realised that I was being grouped as being an ‘older’ person and therefore not really fitting the bill anymore, so to speak. It was strange to observe and feel this as someone who is actually more engaged in life now than I probably ever have been in my entire life! But as you say, this is the general consensus that the population have of older people, and is something that needs to change.

521. Great article Rebecca, recently I have been reading about care homes introducing a day care centre next to the care home so that the elderly can interact with the toddlers and the results have been nothing short of amazing. Many of the elderly looked and felt better in themselves, and thoroughly enjoyed the time spent with the youngsters, and even those who could not see the benefit in the beginning reluctantly admitted that they enjoyed themselves. Lets face it the way our elderly are living today in these care homes is not natural.

     1. Julie I agree with you, it is not natural for us to put our elderly into care homes and I have spoken to many elderly in hospital and they dislike the care homes that they are sent to and would much prefer to be at home or living with their grown up children. It is very sad to hear when talking to the elderly that they feel they would be a burden on their children who they say lead such busy lives that they don’t feel there is any time for them. And for some of the elderly in hospital this is borne out by the lack of visits they have from their family. We do seem to live in a world where the elderly get parked to one side once they reach a certain age as though they can no longer contribute to society, which we all know is not true at all.

     2. Social isolation is deadly no matter what our age. And with our increasingly digital interactions and lack of social interaction is going to damage our social health even more as the younger generations will be unable to work.

        1. Good point Leigh, I feel we underestimate how important social interaction is for us. I know from my own experience that isolation only goes onto wanting more isolation, and then we get to the point where we do not want to go out and speak to people even in the grocery store.

        2. And yet we do know this has such an effect. Otherwise why would solitary confinement and the ‘naughty step/corner’ be used as a means of negative feedback learning and punishment?

522. This is a very wise and considered article that makes complete sense to me Rebecca. The key here being to foster true love and care amongst us at an early age so we set the standard of what it means to truly look after ourselves and each other. The reason we as a society have got into such a mess, is because we have not established a solid foundation of personal values that are respected and upheld when we are together as a community.

523. The problem of the aging population with deteriorating health is one that many are concerned with and have been for some time. WE seem to have become obsessed with living longer, even though from my experience many people are not all that happy and feel the lack in their life through the existence that is the norm. Quality of life rather than quantity feels key to me and bringing focus back to us knowing how to live full, purposeful lives that are not abusive to our bodies would be a great start.

524. Great article Rebecca. Life will continue to reflect how we are living back to us through the state of our health. It does this without any investment in the outcome. The state of our health and the world in general are not dire enough to actually make most of us wake up from our self imposed stupors and so the fact of the matter is that it’s going to have to get considerably worse before enough people start to ask the same questions as you Rebecca.

525. Life isn’t about becoming more old. It is about living joyfully throughout all our days in our lives. This requires a connection with that joy and love which in turn can only be possible if we don’t withdraw from life. Which is the opposite of the current choices most people make, which is withdrawing from life, reducing taking responsibility and than later on being dissatisfied about our life lived. We’re worth to live our true loving nature. To be able to live this we are to support ourselves and each other to accept and let go all the not so loving choices we’ve made.

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