The human being needs a challenge, and my advice to every person in Singapore and elsewhere: Keep yourself interested, have a challenge.
If you’re not interested in the world and the world is not interested in you, the biggest punishment a man can receive is total isolation in a dungeon, black and complete withdrawal of all stimuli, that’s real torture.
I think the most important thing in aging is you got to understand yourself.
And the knowledge now is all there. When I was growing up, the knowledge wasn’t there.
I had to get the knowledge from friends, from doctors.
As you grow, you reach 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 and then, thereafter, you are on a gradual slope down physically.
Mentally, you carry on and on and on until I don’t know what age, but mathematicians will tell you that they know their best output is when they’re in their 20s and 30s when your mental energy is powerful and you haven’t lost many neurons. That’s what they tell me.
So, as you acquire more knowledge, you then craft a program for yourself to maximize what you have. It’s just common sense.
But I think the most important single lesson I learnt in life was that if you isolate yourself, you’re done for.
The human being is a social animal – he needs stimuli, he needs to meet people, to catch up with the world.
It is the stimuli; it is the constant interaction with people across the world that keeps me aware and alive to what’s going on and what we can do to adjust to this different world.
In other words, you must have an interest in life.
If you believe that at 55, you’re retiring, you’re going to read books, play golf and drink wine, then I think you’re done for.
So statistically they will show you that all the people who retire and lead sedentary lives, the pensioners die off very quickly.
So, we now have a social problem with medical sciences, new procedures, new drugs, many more people are going to live long lives.
If the mindset is that when I reach retirement age 62, I’m old, I can’t work anymore, I don’t have to work, I just sit back, now is the time I’ll enjoy life, I think you’re making the biggest mistake of your life.
After one month, or after two months, even if you go traveling with nothing to do, with no purpose in life, you will just degrade, you’ll go to seed.
The human being needs a challenge, and my advice to every person in Singapore and elsewhere: Keep yourself interested, have a challenge.
If you’re not interested in the world and the world is not interested in you, the biggest punishment a man can receive is total isolation in a dungeon, black and complete withdrawal of all stimuli, that’s real torture.
So when I read that people believe, Singaporeans say: “Oh, 62 I’m retiring.” I say to them: “You really want to die quickly?”
If you want to see sunrise tomorrow or sunset, you must have a reason, you must have the stimuli to keep going.
Have a purpose driven life and finish well, my friends.