When I first heard of Bryan Johnson, a mega-wealthy tech entrepreneur who reportedly spends more than $2 million a year trying to keep his 45-year-old self a physical representation of 18 I admit to scoffing at his quest for eternal life.
Looking further into his story I discovered a deeper and far more important message that brought me face-to-face with my own hypocrisy.
On a holiday in the south of France a few years ago, memorable mostly for anxiety-ridden experiences in the hire car and learning to float in a swimming pool for the first time in my life, I read Matt Haig’s “How To Stop Time”.
In it, the main character, Tom, has been alive for centuries and finds that enduring existence has a habit of spoiling some of life’s most precious bits, like falling in love with someone destined to live a life of regular length.
If loss is experienced ad infinitum agelessness is more like a burden.
If life is endless what’s the point of anything?
And yet.
Back with Bryan Johnson, there is something other-worldly about the rafts of tests he puts himself through, the diet he adheres to rigidly, and the daily supplements he swallows down in industrial quantities.
His life doesn’t seem to include much joy.
Putting my prejudices aside I watch a short interview he does with Bloomberg.
He explains the relevance of his personal “experiment” to the average person who could not and would not want to go to his extremes but the interviewers ignore that story in search of a different one.
The point he makes time and again is that whilst none of us can stop time and only those with great tenacity and deep pockets can stall the ageing process we could all stop acting in ways that are actively destructive.
He talks about the point in his life when he decided something needed to change, a scenario familiar I suspect to many of us.
On the back of a prolonged period of depression he would encounter a part of himself he called “Evening Bryan” who would appear at 7 pm and deal with the stress of the day by eating badly, ruining his sleep and, as a result, mean that his body started the next day in bad shape in a constant self-defeating cycle.
While the extremes to which he has gone to protect his physical health might be the only newsworthy story it is the dull, everyman tale that matters to all of us.
As I’m telling my daughter about Bryan Johnson she says,
Didn’t you recently spend hundreds of pounds on a load of tests to learn how your body responds to different food and isn’t that about living longer and healthier?
She’s right. I am a hypocrite, but with good intent.
The more that my life has changed to eradicate active self-inflicted damage the easier it has become to take progressive, proactive and loving steps in the name of self-care.
I might not be Bryan Johnson but I’m probably just as interested in staying alive as he is.
While it’s true that I always answer the question, “would you like to live forever?” with a resolute “No” I can’t imagine ever reaching the point where I am ready to stop living, although that wasn’t always the case. With that comes a responsibility to look after myself.
On that point at least Bryan Johnson and I are aligned.
Leave a Reply