2019: Resolving to Aspire

I am tempted to do as I have done many times before at this temporal pivot: catch the currents of the zeitgeist and talk about resolutions. But this year, it occurs to me that while not the same, resolution and resignation share psychological DNA. We resign ourselves to the arduous, the tedious, the unpleasant. We resolve to stay the course in spite of it all. And as we all know, we only seldom do.

Aspirations are of altogether different psychological parentage. Resolutions, for instance, might well confer with a bathroom scale for a measure of our self-worth. Aspiration would never indulge such demeaning nonsense. Aspiration envisions the version of us who knows damn well our own worth; knows damn well bathroom scales can’t measure THAT. Aspiration declares our self-worth with quiet pride; defends it with confidence.

May I suggest, then, that for 2019- you forego resolving, and aspire instead?

Pictured above is me with a good friend; my daughter, Natalia; and…my Dad, on top of Connecticut’s highest hill, Bear Mountain. We took this photo on 12/23/18, in the middle of our hike. That ellipsis before ‘my Dad’ is because he will turn 80 in July. 

Now, to be fair, the highest “peak” in Connecticut is not saying much by the standards of, say, Colorado, or Idaho, or Hawaii, or Alaska. Bear Mountain, at 2323 feet in altitude, is a Rocky Mountain foot hill, and not more than a mole hill up against Denali (formerly Mount McKinley). But that does little to change the significance of this picture. We were up there in the middle of a 7 mile up and down hike, involving a scramble over a steep, icy sequence of rock ledges for the last half mile.

So, yes, it’s already a testament to the power of lifestyle as medicine that I found this hike an exhilarating bit of delightful recreation, a nice workout but not overly taxing. I am, after all, a 55-year-old guy with a desk job. The average condition of a guy fitting that description in our culture involves multiple medications, a lot of extra weight around the middle, and either a stent or a CABG scar. I take no medications, have neither stent nor chest scar, and the only extra weight I carried on that hike was in my backpack. But let’s not waste any time being impressed with me, please. I was up there with my father!

That’s the power of lifestyle as medicine; that’s how investing in health and vitality throughout life pays us back. We can all call to mind a picture of a “typical” octogenarian; it does not involve climbing a mountain with two generations of your living, human legacy. But it could! In my Dad’s case, it does.

The Blue Zones show us exactly this kind of possibility at scale, but perhaps a “resolution” mindset has us all thinking that only happens for others, far away. It need not be so. Admittedly, my Dad still has a way to go to 100, and Dan Buettner has yet to draw a blue circle around the Katz clan on a map. But I think my family has a good chance of qualifying as a mini-Blue Zone all its own. I wish the same for yours.

Health tops the list of resolutions in the U.S. every year. All too often, though, it is a myopic, blinkered view of health – with a focus on weight loss. Recent years have seen an emphasis on fitness and eating well, which is encouraging, but even these may often be thought of as means to an end, with weight loss the intended end.

Losing weight is a resolution. Finding health is an aspiration. Vitality truly is the gift that keeps on giving, and while none of us gets a guarantee of it no matter what we do, the likelihood of this return rises in direct tandem with our investments. And yes, we certainly do know the details of the ideal investment portfolio, diet included.

So that’s my primary tip for 2019: don’t resolve, aspire. Or, resolve to aspire.

I have a secondary tip, predicated on what we know about the strength born only of unity. Aspire to vitality not only for yourself, but for those you love. Aspire to share the climb, and the vista.

Our culture conspires mightily against our pursuit of vitality, and this is an outrage; but there is not nearly enough of our outrage on display. If you see something barring your ascent, say something. Say something about a food supply willfully engineered to propagate obesity and chronic disease; say something about mortgaging the health of children to fortify quarterly corporate earnings; say something about assaults on the vitality of the Earth itself, on which our hope for the same ineluctably depends.

In this way, we aspire to be part of a collective effort that makes our individual load much lighter, our quest more likely to succeed. Sure, let’s all be personally responsible. But let’s acknowledge that at times the best tonics for human aspiration reside with the body politic. These are not mutually exclusive. Let us aspire to their synergistic potential in 2019. In the Blue Zones, individuals need not fight the prevailing currents of their culture to get to vitality; the prevailing currents of their cultures take them there. We have every right to aspire to the same; the currents of culture are ours to command.

We know the formula for adding years to lives, and life to years. We know the portfolio of practices at the confluence of vital individual, vital family, vital community, vital planet.

So don’t resolve for 2019; aspire. It will take you higher.

Happy New Year.

-fin

Dr. David L. Katz

Author, The Truth about Food. All book proceeds go to support the True Health Initiative, a federally authorized 501c3 non-profit.