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How To Stay Young Forever.
Before I begin, I feel like I should point out that you can’t grow old. Your body does of course, but just by calling it “your” body, we’re acknowledging that your buddy isn’t not you, but something you own. Who you are, the collection of thoughts and feelings and memories that you refer to as “I”, doesn’t age. It’s why some people are wise enough to feel like they’re in their 20s when they reach their 80s.
Nonetheless it’s true that if you haven’t been conscious enough, a certain weariness sets in which we tend to call growing old. This weariness isn’t inevitable. Nor is it irreversible. It’s simply the accumulation of an error in thinking. The result of a lack of attention. How do you shake off this weariness? Well, by paying attention of course.
When we’re young we pay attention to life because we’re still expecting it to surprise us. We live life fully because we still believe in our potential. As children, we haven’t yet been convinced that there are rules. And we certainly don’t understand them if there are. So we pay as much attention as we can and try to figure them out.
This is what you did when you were still young; you tried to figure things out. But what most likely happened is that somebody who had been playing the game longer than you, told you what…