How To Live Longer

 Living longer seems to be the mantra for those who ply the paths and jog the trails and pedal the tarmack not to speak of those who spend countless hours lifting metals and plying machinery in a gym. I admire these folks enormously especially since I have no interest at this age in doing any of it. I looked into the whole matter of exercising in an artificial manner, today, and found out that if I did daily exercise of a rather intense kind every day I might live a couple of years longer. First of all, who can prove that, and second of all, do these statisticians know when I am going to die in order to make their numbers jibe? I had relatives that never thought about exercise because they were too busy going to work and looking after a number of children they had in the family. Going to the gym meant cheering  their kids on as they used balls of some sort in a large, expensive school hall. They all lived well beyond  eighty for the most part, especially the mothers who reared and fed and cleaned up after their hoards of family members. It is clear that their exercise wasn't looking at  little plastic cyber watches, then jumping up in the middle of a social event and bouncing up and down on the spot. I kid you not, I saw it this week. Today's parents spend much of their time driving the children to games and school and to play dates where they will be playing together at screens with more little plastic items held in their hands while putting the other small ones they held previously in their hands, down unless they buzz and need attention. No, I am not being cynical unless reality is just that. It follows that humans who dress up in skin tight elastic garments and go places to ride bikes to nowhere fast or lie on mats and pull their muscles to painful limits or dress loosely and run on cement sidewalks for miles with wires in their ears, need to do these endeavors to live an extra two years. So I am told. When I get to my final two years, I doubt I will be recalling when I played tennis every morning before work or sweated in a dance class. Maybe I should check my little watch that tells me if my heart is beating or not?