How to Keep Your Ship Afloat
It was April 15, 1912. Passengers on the Titanic were celebrating the vacation of their lives on the world’s biggest and most luxurious cruise ship on its maiden voyage. Management knew they were in dangerous waters. The ship was informed of the ice floes, yet they steamed full throttle with only enough lifeboats for half the passengers. Denial? Overconfidence? Sloppiness? Their lack of preventative measures cost 1517 lives.
Imagine being on the dance floor without a care in the world.
Suddenly, you hear a deafening crash and get thrown to the floor by a sudden powerful jolt. What goes through your mind? Probably panic, right? But, then what?
According to archived data, passengers generally reacted three ways.
- Some stayed in a state of panic.
- Others slipped into denial, continuing to drink and party.
- A smaller percentage kept their cool, planned rational action, followed instructions from the crew and then initiated their actions.
Which group do you think had the highest survival rate? Exactly, it was those who planned and then initiated their plans.
Did you know many ran to their staterooms to rescue their money, jewelry and other belongings? Many of those whose first concern was their wealth took it to their watery graves.
When they first felt the impact, the passengers had no idea that within two and a half hours, the Titanic would rest on the ocean floor.
Like those passengers, we are on a sinking ship. Sure, we have more that two and a half hours. You have how many? Ten, twenty, thirty or more years? But, guess what? We do not have a lifeboat to fight over. The good news is, we are building one for you now.
Do not go down on aging’s Titanic. Choose to survive.
Like the Titanic‘s management, who in denial of the looming dangers, chose to go full speed ahead, society, including governments and corporations, have their heads in the sand when it comes to aging. They party on, ignoring the reality of our pending demise. They do not consider building a lifeboat to cure aging.
Instead, they tend to the sinking ship‘s maintenance, patching leaks here and there, bailing out water when it does get in, and they continue treating symptoms. Most industries follow their lead.
Then, when something goes wrong, people panic. They pull all stops to cure what should have been prevented. They never considered fixing aging in the first place.
Preventative medicine and lifestyle changes seemed like too much of a bother. After all, they had a mortgage to take care of twenty years ago and yearly vacations to plan and save for. They live hand to mouth and, like lemmings, they follow big government’s and big pharma’s direction to their premature deaths.
Others cling to their wealth instead of investing a portion in their health and longevity and in the technologies that might prolong their lives. They die rich when they could have survived longer and gotten even richer.
Then there are a growing minority who invest in their personal health and who invest in the type of technologies described in Part I of Life Extension Express. Maximum Life Foundation is spearheading that movement.
Ironically, early investors in these technologies may not only be the first beneficiaries of their life-extending properties, they may even be able to multiply their wealth from the potential returns from their investments.
How would you like to own a piece of the company or companies that develop age-reversing treatments or products? What would a cure for aging be worth?
We have some work to do first. For example, there is an ongoing lifeboat collision between close-minded cultural traditions and the moving boundary of what is possible in medical science. Traditions threatened by any major change, like what can be done and should be done about aging, are powerful things.
“Curing” aging, like so many advances that medicine has seen at one time or another, breaks those traditions. We see a certain level of hostility when traditions are challenged. This is true of longevity science in general.
Over the years ahead, the research community will, with sufficient directed funding, slow and reverse the course of aging, and ultimately eliminate aging entirely, including the frailty and age-related diseases it brings. However, a substantial proportion of the population does not yet see this as a desirable goal. That is a problem, our problem, and another challenge of longevity and surviving we have to surmount.
So, who is the captain of your ship? If not you, you choose to give control to someone else like many on the Titanic. Whether it’s government, big business or antiquated traditional ideas, that “someone else” does not have your best interests at heart.
Are you going to panic and let someone else steer you into an iceberg, or are you going to take control of your own destiny?
It’s sink or stay afloat. What life-loving person would choose to go down with the ship? That decision is made years before the ship sinks. Insurance is not for sale when you need it.
How do you keep your head above water when life starts to pull you under or overwhelms you?