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Is it any wonder that the natives of Andorra have the longest life expectancy in the world? Clean air. Take your breath away mountain views. Well off, with almost non-existent levels of crime (one prison with 50 inmates for the whole country), over 700 years of peace and a temperate climate of cold snowy winters and warm, arid summers; this tiny nation may in truth hold the mystery to stay young, live longer and better.
At just 2.5 times the size of Washington, D.C., the country sits tucked among France and Spain, a landlocked nation of narrow valleys surrounded by the staggering Pyrenees mountains.
With a population of just over 82,000, Andorra has been a democracy since March 1993. Tourism accounts for 80% of the income of this well-to-do country, the banking sector; with it is “tax haven” status likewise contributes to the successfulness of the country.
And if all this makes you want to pull up stakes and move… this next bit of news will surely tip the scales. Andorrans live longer than any person else in the world according to the World Health Organization. The intermediate life expectancy for natives in this almost concealed little country is 83.5 years – equated to U.S. life expectancy of 78.14 and the United Kingdom’s 78.85. Maybe we could learn a thing or two from these people.
Recently BBC reporter Paul Henley made a brief visit to this mountainous country not long back to try and find out what sets them isolated from the rest of the world. And what he found were a great deal of reasons for the long, healthful lives of Andorra’s population.
For starters, there is a outstanding special and significant stress on staying physically active. These humans do hard, active work well past the age we’d retire. Every one of the seven parishes of the country has state of the art public (free to use) leisure centers.
It’s not not common to see humans in their 80s and 90s very active – either taking fitness classes at the centers, taking care of cattle in rough terrain or in a heap of other active occupation.
Another important divergence is the diet…
In Andorra persons tend to eat the classic Mediterranean diet – lean meats, fresh veggies, fruits, olive oil is applied in cooking.
People recognise what’s healthful and seek it out. Restaurants offer delicious healthful foods as well. Interestingly, Andorrans do drink a good deal of red wine (even in the hospital), and carry on to smoke cigarettes – totally unexpected giving careful consideration to their longevity numbers.
One other key to living longer here is the quality of the health care the citizens receive. The World Health Organization estimates that Andorra has the third best public health scheme in the world. The same report ranks the UK as 24th, Canada at 35th and the U.S. 72nd.
The hospital appeared to reporter Henley more like a private clinic, and the doctor’s there are now used to performing surgery on persons in their eighties and nineties.
“They go back to their normal lives. And a very ordinary question, before the operation, is ‘how soon will I be competent to walk in the mountains again, to tend my garden, to go into the woods and gather mushrooms?” says Luis Pallares, an Andorran consulting surgeon.
Centuries of peace and a lack of violent crime finish the picture, giving Andorran citizens a peace of mind and capacity to compromise that may well be percentage of the mystery that allows them to stay young and has them living so much longer.
Meditation Classics
A new translation, with an Introduction, by Gregory Hays
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (a.d. 121–180) succeeded his adoptive father as emperor of Rome in a.d. 161—and Meditations remains one of the biggest works of spiritual and ethical reflectiveness ever written. With a unfathomed understanding of humane behavior, Marcus provides insights, wisdom, and practical guidance on everything from living in the world to coping with adversity to interacting with others. Consequently, the Meditations have become required reading for statesmen and philosophers alike, while generations of ordinary readers have responded to the straightforward intimacy of his style. In Gregory Hays’s new translation—the primary in a generation—Marcus’s thoughts speak with a new immediacy: never before have they been so directly and powerfully presented.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
- Amazon Sales Rank: #45030 in eBooks
- Published on: 2009-09-16
- Released on: 2009-09-16
- Format: Kindle eBook
- Number of items: 1
| ReviewOne measure, perhaps, of a book’s worth, is it is intergenerational pliancy: do new readers acquire it and interpret it anew down through the ages? The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, translated and introduced by Gregory Hays, by that standard, is very worthwhile, indeed. Hays proposes that it is most recent incarnation–as a self-help book–is not only valid, but may be close to the author’s intent. The book, which Hays calls, fondly, a “haphazard set of notes,” is indicatory of the role of system of belief among the ancients in that it is “expected to provide a ‘design for living.’” And it does, both aphoristically (“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.”) and rhetorically (“What is it in ourselves that we will have to prize?”). Whether these, and other entries (“Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life.”) sound life-changing or like entries in a teenager’s diary is up to the person reader, as it will have to be. Hays’s introduction, which sketches the life of Marcus Aurelius (emperor of Rome A.D. 161-180) as well as the basic tenets of stoicism, is accessible and jaunty. –H. O’Billovich
Review“Here, for our age, is [Marcus’s] outstanding work staged in it is entirety, strongly introduced and freshly, elegantly translated.” —Robert Fagles
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Language NotesText: English (translation)
Original Language: Latin
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516 of 524 people found the following review helpful.
 steel for your spine
By The Don Wood Files
One should have more than one translation for Meditations. Note this difference between Maxwell Staniforth’s translation in 1964 (Penguin Classics) and Hay’s 2002 translation in these two passages.
1964: When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out-of-tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it.
2002: When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep going back to it.
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1964: Adapt yourself to the environment in which your life has been cast, and show true love to the fellow-mortals with whom destiny has surrounded you.
2002: The things ordained for you – teach yourself to be at one with those. And the people who share them with you – treat them with love. With real love.
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The 1964 version is regal, while the 2002 (Hays’) version is Aurelius writing, quickly, in a spiral notebook while on horseback, the equivalent of “memo to myself.”
Reading this book is like taking a cold shower, or visiting a favorite bartender, who insists on serving you coffee, not drink. Hays has brought us a Marcus Aurelius who puts his hand on your shoulder, looks you in the eye, and tells you like it is: Get over yourself. You can’t change the world. Do your best and realize you are of this earth. Human experience is muddy, so what? This book is best read in tough times, when you could use a little steel in your spine.
75 of 77 people found the following review helpful.
 The best book of practical philosophy ever written
By A
The style is direct and unpretentious. The message is simple but extraordinarily powerful: life is short, the past and the future are inaccessible, pain and pleasure have no meaning, but inside each one of us there is a ruling faculty that is touched only by itself. Only that which makes us better capable of confronting our condition with resolution and courage can be said to be good, and only that which makes us worse and more unsatisfied can be said to be bad. The only thing that is of any importance is our own private quest for perfection, which no external power can ever destroy. Marcus Aurelius delivers many insightful and inspirational observations about human nature and the human condition, and he makes an excellent rational argument for seeking the good and for acting modestly and continently. I cannot think or a more satifying and moving work, and it is all the more poignant because it was written by a man who wielded almost absolute power and lived surrounded by the luxury, yet managed to keep things in perspective and to occupy himself only with what truly matters. One sentence captures perfectly the spirit of his writings: “Where a man can live, there he can also live well.” An extraordinary testimony of wisdom and fortitude.
216 of 234 people found the following review helpful.
Timeless wisdom for a weary world
By H. Powell
“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill will, and selfishness-all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother; therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading” (To Himself, II.1). This selection from “Meditations” (“To Himself” was the original Greek title)captures so much of the essence of this incredibly powerful book. Marcus Aurelius at times sounds more like the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Hesiod, or James Allen than he does his Stoic forerunners: proof once again that true wisdom resides in every man’s heart and mind and transcends the boundaries of time, place, ethnicity,and doctrine. The job of the philosopher is to reintroduce his pupils to THEMSELVES, and once the self is realized, the reality of the universe becomes much clearer (“evil” derives from delusions)and the temptations of excess and the fears of deprivation become less powerful. These are true words to live by, more so now than they have ever been before. Happiness can be found in simplicity; hard work DOES pay off; the cooler head always prevails; immoderate pleasures can kill and fear is often unfounded. Marcus, like Buddha, was born in the lap of luxury, but he was destined to hold a position in society for which he was not well suited by virtue of his sensitive and studious nature: the ruler of an ancient and corrupt civilization that dominated most of the known world. “Meditations” is Marcus’s attempt to cope with a life and a job that he never really wanted. Thankfully, we can apply Marcus’s self conversation to the trials and tribulations of everyday life (the same can not be said for most other volumes of Greco-Roman philosophy, and this is especially the case with the over dogmatic Plato). I urge you to read this. Once you do, I guarantee you will read it over and over again and it will take its place on your list of personal, life changing favorites. One last thought: keep in mind that Marcus was a pagan and don’t let the fact that Bill Clinton enjoyed the book sway you from buying it… For those interested in the life of Marcus Aurelius the man, also read his biography in Volume 1 of the Loeb edition of the Scriptores Historiae Augustae.
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