Accepting Aging May Lead to a Longer Life

Men seem innately unwilling to accept aging, and this may be an important reason why men's average life expectancy is far lower than women's. My father-in-law, in his later years, refused to accept aging and insisted on doing work he could manage when young; as a result, he died prematurely.

Recently my father had a fall. The reason was simple: at nearly eighty, he refused to accept aging and insisted on doing heavy physical work suited only to strong young men. Although he had always been sturdy, his age was what it was, and his strength inevitably declined. The result was predictable: he learned a painful lesson. During postoperative rehabilitation he was again impatient for quick results, disregarding his advanced age and debility; on the tenth day after surgery he got out of bed and did excessive rehab exercise, and as a result his ankle swelled and the surgical incision became unbearably painful. After discharge he stayed at my sister's home; she called me in the middle of the night asking for help.

I worried about his stubbornness, but then I realized I saw the same refusal to accept aging in myself. I am nearly fifty, yet I still get up before five every day to memorize words, read, work problems, write, do farm work, and handle household chores, never idle for a moment. My wife often says I am as diligent as a perpetual motion machine, making her feel guilty even for wanting to slack off.

In fact I am no longer what I was: my memory has declined, and my energy is not what it was at twenty. Yet I still push forward tirelessly as I did in my early twenties, enduring hardship well. I watched my father-in-law die young because he refused to accept aging, and I watch my father suffer because of it. I know deeply that refusing to grow old has a price, yet I am unconsciously following in their footsteps.

I have observed many people around me and find that most middle-aged and elderly men share this phenomenon; few can truly stop. Some keep working selflessly after retirement. Previously, an Australian scientist over a hundred even chose assisted suicide in Switzerland because he could no longer work and felt life was meaningless. This seems to be a trait men have evolved in the competition for survival.

Men are born into a social role that bears the main responsibility for feeding the family; for most of a man's life, striving is the central theme, and few escape this pattern. Women, once they reach middle and old age, can relax into a rich variety of leisure activities. But men, once they stop moving, easily lose their sense of worth and even become depressed—especially men once regarded as successes.

Some long-lived men seem to work all their lives. China's scholars Zhou Youguang and Zheng Jie, both over 110, worked until the very end of their lives. The British economist Ronald Coase, at 108, still urged his student Steven Cheung (then in his eighties) to value his time, saying Cheung was in his prime and could still achieve much in economics.

Such men are typical lifelong workers; the work they do in old age is not high-intensity physical labor but relatively lighter mental work. Hence their late-life quality of life is high, and the sense of worth gained from working improves their mental state.

I am 46 this year and often think about how to spend my later years. The psychiatric literature I read shows that more than half of people over 75 have mental disorders of varying degrees; physical degeneration and loss of a sense of worth are the main triggers. I still frequently spend time in the library; my wife periodically urges me not to push so hard. I tell her I am not really grinding; rather, aside from this, I have no better way to spend my time. Only by continually moving forward do I feel most comfortable.

Sometimes I wonder whether the cultural environment of my hometown, Huanggang in Hubei, has produced my present state. Looking at this year's list of the top-100 county-level high schools nationwide, five of the entries are from Hubei, and all five are in the Huanggang region; nowhere else in Hubei has one. This shows that people from Huanggang are truly hardworking. I was born in Huanggang and grew up there until college; in middle school I was a top student and an Olympiad competitor, so I was inevitably influenced by Huanggang's broader environment.

But this is probably only one factor, because when we look at humanity as a whole, we find that men everywhere have this tendency. Many Western men do volunteer work in their communities after retirement to make their lives fuller. Men who are completely idle in old age may have a shorter average life expectancy than those with something to do—though this is only my personal "surrounding statistics," lacking scientific evidence.

I lean toward choosing a good middle ground between accepting aging and living meaningfully: gradually accepting the reality of declining and degenerating, while still striving to remain productive in old age, but stopping short of overexerting myself. Perhaps this will make the quality of my remaining years a little higher.