I’ve just finished watching Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, produced and hosted by Dan Buettner, on Netflix.
It’s an optimistic distillation of a longevity researcher and activist’s findings on what makes for a long and happy life. Traveling across the world, from Japan to Italy to Costa Rica, Dan introduces us to the few places in the world where the number of centenarians is vastly greater than the global average.
He outlines the secrets to a long and happy life as follows:
- Move naturally
- Eat wisely
- Have a sense of purpose
- Connect with other people
These are things that not new exactly, but are often taken for granted.
But is a long life really that great?
There is that argument saying, “What is a long life if you’re just suffering?”.
I think that people who’ve uttered those very words were sad people with bad backs and less than 60 years old.
Often we project the current pains of our (relative) youth into the future, when the future could actually be very different from our present.
The centenarians featured on Live to 100 are all happy looking. Of course, we can’t then conclude that super-old people are always happy people. But the show’s protagonists are the argument against the “long-life-long-suffering” theory. Besides the show is really taking happiness as the twin virtue of mere physical longevity. It does make a strong case for adding purpose and human connection as the key to happiness, the cherry on top of long life.
In short, the show is really enlightening. There are small, everyday habits that we can start today, which can take us to a ripe — happy — old age.
Daryl Zamora 
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