How fast are years aging us? (Part one)

A friend of mine used to tell me: “When we get to be 70 our bodies age twice as fast as they used to…” I’ve always wondered if this French popular expression held a kernel of truth and if it was the case was the multiplier “two” correct at 70, but how much should it be upgraded at 75, 80, 85, 90 and further as we age. 

I wondered if there had been any studies made, what was objectively measured and what were the findings if any. After doing some research, I soon realized that my friend’s saying contained some figments of truth, but not in the literal sense that "the body suddenly ages twice as fast at 70." Researchers who study aging have found that aging is not linear. 

Many aspects of human physiology decline gradually for decades and then accelerate at certain milestones. However, the acceleration differs depending on what’s being measured. There are in fact at least four ways to measure aging: 

• Mortality risk (chance of dying within a given year) 
• Physical performance (strength, balance, walking speed, endurance) 
• Organ function (heart, lungs, kidneys, immune system, etc.) 
• Biological markers (DNA, proteins, inflammation, cellular changes) 

The above categories or aspects do not all age simultaneously. 

Starting with mortality risk, one of the most robust findings in demography is the Gompertz law, discovered in the 1820s. It shows that after adulthood, the risk of death increases approximately exponentially with age. A rough rule is that mortality risk doubles every 7–9 years after middle age. 

For example, if a healthy 60-year-old has a certain annual risk of death, at 68–69, that risk is about twice as high. At 76–78, it’s about four times as high, then at 84–87, it’s about eight times as high. This does not mean the body is aging twice as fast; it means the consequences of accumulated aging become increasingly apparent. 

In terms of physical capabilities, we see several bodily functions declining at an accelerated rate, starting with muscle mass and strength. After age 30, muscle mass declines slowly (about 3–8% per decade), but past age 60–70 the loss often accelerates significantly, with strength falling faster than muscle mass itself. 

This is why many people notice that, at 80, they may lose strength in a year that would have taken several years to lose at 50. Walking speed and balance both decline gradually until about 70, then the slope steepens after 75–80. These measures are among the best predictors of future health and longevity. 

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about how aging affects organ functions and other biological markers...

Getting rid of grudge (Part four)

My way to eradicating grudges began with chronologically walking my memory and making a list of the resentments I had towards specific people, grading them in intensity and stating the reasons. 

Symmetrically, I created a parallel list, including those I feel gratitude from, including mentors, friends, relatives, colleagues and even adversaries that planted in me the seed that made me who I am today. As you may already know, showing gratitude plays a major role when I meditate and having both lists helped me see that the gratitude list is longer and more consequential than the resentment list. 

The benefit of this entire exercise is that grudges often exist as a vague emotional cloud. Identifying them explicitly helps me turning them from something that unconsciously influences me into something I can see and examine consciously. There are however, two very different ways of establishing the list, either by creating a detailed inventory of offenses and repeatedly reliving them, not a helpful one, or treating it as an audit whose purpose is closure. Look at the example below.

The crucial questions are the last three listed. Instead of dwelling on, "How badly was I treated?", I gradually move toward "What exactly hurt me?", "What lesson did it teach me?", "What’s the reason for not forgiving now?". 

Many find that the actual offense is not the deepest wound, for example, a betrayal may conceal a need for recognition, A family conflict may hide a need for love. A professional slight may suggest wounded pride, A friendship rupture may hold back disappointment. Once the deeper wound is identified, the resentment often weakens considerably. 

At my age, there’s another dimension that’s worth noting. I discovered that some of the folks who hurt me were immature, as they acted out of fear, were carrying their own burdens, were badly sick or no longer alive. This doesn’t excuse their actions, but it often changes the emotional view. 

Many people my age also report an interesting shift; what once seemed like malice increasingly looks like human frailty and this can make forgiveness easier. When all entries are finished I suggest you try completing this sentence: "The event remains part of my history, but it no longer deserves space in my future." 

You don’t have to force yourself to feel forgiveness immediately, the objective is not to convince yourself that the hurt never mattered but it’s just to stop paying emotional interest on an old debt. In many ways, my approach resembles an end-of-life accounting process—not in a morbid sense, but in the sense of closing old books before moving on. 

Given my interest in meditation, gratitude, and continual self-improvement, the exercise becomes less a catalog of grievances and more a map of how life's difficulties helped shape the person I eventually became. 

In conclusion, holding onto resentment is like carrying a hot coal in the hand with the intention of throwing it at someone else, but meanwhile, our own hand is the one being burned. Just let go of all our grudges and good luck!

Getting rid of grudge (Part three)

Eradicating resentment and grudges from our lives, gives us greater peace of mind, less mental replaying of old events and just better relationships. All the resentment that we may harbor toward one person often spills into interactions with others. 

Releasing it makes us more open, patient, and generous. In addition, we become less vulnerable to having old wounds constantly reopened. Many people eventually quickly come to realize that those who harmed them were themselves driven by fear, ignorance, insecurity, or suffering. Understanding does not excuse behavior, but it can soften hatred. 

The stronger sense of freedom that comes with letting go, is perhaps the greatest benefit. Freedom is not simply being able to do what we want. It’s also being free from compulsions that enslave our inner life and resentment is precisely one of them. 

I’m not saying that there are situations where anger serves an important purpose. If someone is being abused, exploited, or mistreated, anger can signal that boundaries need to be established. Prematurely trying to "forgive and forget" can sometimes suppress legitimate needs for protection, accountability, or justice. I personally don’t believe that an immoral and outlaw person like Trump has to be forgiven before he pays for what he’s done. 

The healthiest sequence is often to recognize the injury, feel the emotions honestly and learn whatever lessons are necessary. What’s required is to establish appropriate boundaries, then release the resentment. This is where I find the process of forgiveness directly connected to my practice of meditation. I feel gratitude, appreciation for those who shaped my life. 

Then comes my desire to make the latter years of my life a kind of crescendo of personal growth, letting go of grudges align naturally with that effort. Many discover that gratitude and resentment compete for the same mental space. 

The more deeply one appreciates the gifts, lessons, and relationships that have formed one's life, the harder it becomes to remain preoccupied with old grievances. That does not mean becoming naïve or passive. It means choosing which experiences deserve continued residence in your mind. 

In the next blog I’ll propose a step by step process to prepare that change and give it a solid chance to succeed!

Getting rid of grudge (Part two)

Erasing resentment from our crowded minds generally works pretty well because several mechanisms seem to be involved. The first is that we finally stop fighting reality. Typically, a painful event occurred. It shouldn’t have, but it did. 

Our mind often spends years arguing with a fact that cannot be changed. Letting go means acknowledging reality without having to approve of it and this frees enormous mental energy. 

Next, it’s easy to see that as long as our emotional state depends on someone else's apology, punishment, or transformation, part of our well-being remains in their hands. By releasing resentment, we reclaim ownership of our inner life. 

That’s precisely when the message becomes: "What happened was wrong, but I refuse to let it poison my present." At this point, our stress physiology settles down as anger, and grievance activate threat-related systems in the body. The result of repeatedly replaying injuries can maintain elevated stress responses, muscle tension, vigilance, and emotional reactivity. 

When the grievance loses its emotional grip, the body often relaxes as well. At that moment, attention becomes available again. We all know that attention is a limited resource that will finally be able to return to us as extra energy. 

This additional source of energy can be redirected toward our relationships, creativity, helping others, learning, spiritual endeavors and just enjoying life. In essence, forgiveness is not giving something to the offender but it’s recovering something for us! 

Tomorrow we’ll see what kind of benefits will come to us…

Getting rid of grudge (Part one)

 

If there is an operation that costs next to nothing and can relieve us from a heavy and continuous burden, it has to be the simple fact of extinguishing grudge, bitterness, hostility, desire for revenge, rancor, enmity and ill-will, to name just a few. These emotions often function like a form of psychological debt. 

They require energy to maintain. The mind repeatedly revisits old injuries, reconstructs conversations, imagines alternative outcomes, or rehearses punishments for those who have wronged us. Even when we are not consciously thinking about the offense, part of our emotional system often remains mobilized around it. 

Of course, I’m not suggesting excusing wrongdoing, forgetting what happened, reconciling with an unsafe person, or abandoning justice. It is primarily an internal act: refusing to continue carrying the emotional burden. Resentment feels heavy to us because when we’re hurt, our minds often conclude: 

"This should not have happened." 

"Someone owes me." 

"Things would be better if they suffered as I suffered." 

"I cannot be at peace until this is corrected." 

And it’s precisely these thoughts that can keep us psychologically attached to the injury and our attention to the past, the event may be over, but your emotional system continues to invest resources in it. When we can’t remove ourselves from these experiences, it always requires more time, maturity and a more intense understanding before we discover that the person we’re punishing most effectively is just ourselves. 

Next time, we’ll attempt to understand how this mental liberation actually operates, so please stay with me!

Pierrot Vernay, 1947-2026

Pierrot passed away on June 23 at age 78. We grew up together as we went to the same grade school, but I didn’t know much about him. I for sure never played with him. His parents were Julien and Olga and he was the elder of three kids in our village baker’s household. 

I’m not writing this because we literally grew up at the same time, but because our childhood happened in two very different silos. He didn’t seem to be a great student and one day his parents must have told him “You’ll be a baker like your Dad, and one day you’ll take over the family business…” without asking what he liked and what he wanted to be. Either fireman, carpenter, airplane pilot or dentist. 

Nope, I can comfortably assume that the question was never asked and he was given no other option. True, none of my parents either asked me that question. What would have Pierrot done if he had the option to pursue his true aspirations? No one will know, but still, he was put to hard work at 14, he spent his life making bread, baking it and feeding us and the growing number of visiting tourists. 

Over the years, I’ve seen him many times waiting on customers behind his counter when his wife Henriette or his mum weren’t available. For lack of a good reason we had not interaction other than “Hello, thank you, goodbye”. 

At retirement, he was totally exhausted, he closed down his bakery and continued living in the same building and complemented his retirement and savings by selling firewood he had prepared for our visitors. 

Did he die happy, fulfilled and having accomplished everything he ever dreamed of? I don’t know and will never have the answer to that question. Adieu, Pierrot!

Let’s take a break!

Sometimes, I fell like literally “running out of gas” and I wonder what are the virtues and the benefits of just "taking a break" from the daily routine? 

Taking a break might end the cycle of chronic stress, reset our brain's processing power, and prevents psychological burnout. It could also shifts our nervous system out of a constant "fight-or-flight" state and place it into a restorative phase. It’s pretty obvious that constant attention drains our working memory. A brief freeze in our routine should recharges our ability to concentrate more deeply. 

Scientists say that stepping away activates the brain's "default mode network." This is the subconscious state where our mind connects unrelated ideas and solves complex problems, like sleep does to a certain degree. It’s also easy to understand that relentless daily choices degrade the quality of our judgment. Pausing also preserves our willpower, mental stamina as well as enhances our sinking memory (we could all use some of this, these days!). 

Some also claim that our brain requires downtime to process, categorize, and store new information learned during our busy routine, and this sounds perfectly logical. Since we all love talking about our hormones, stepping away is also supposed to drop stress hormones like cortisol. This directly can reduce physical tension, lower blood pressure, and boost our immune functions. I’ve also read that taking a big break can rebuild our emotional resilience by reducing both irritability and anxiety. 

With this we get more emotional space to respond to challenges rather than just react. Wow! Not only this, but it should improve our sleep quality as it detaches us from daily stressors and quiets our our mind from racing at night, leading to deeper sleep cycles. I like it! Pausing the noise of a routine is also said to allow us to check in with our deep feelings, goals, and physical health needs. 

Finally, if our timetable won’t let us take a huge, big break, there’s always the “micro-breaks” that can work small miracles in our physical environment. For instance, just move to a different room or step outside. I’m not saying light up a Marlboro! 

A visual shift signals to our brain that work has paused. Let’s make sure to leave our phone in another room so we don’t have the temptation to scroll, which, as we all know, depletes us totally of mental energy. Non-cognitive tasks like spending 10 minutes doing something that requires zero deep thought, like stretching, walking, or staring out a window. 

I kind of like these micro-breaks and short of taking that week long retreat I know I’ll never get to, I’ll begin there by incorporating them in my daily routine!