Dear director, I read with amazement and admiration news from the Rising Sun, which should make us reflect. Japan has exceeded 95 thousand centenarians, a world record. A people who ages, yes, but with grace, dignity and health. And then I asked myself: why do you live so and so well there and so well, while age is stretched out, but does the quality of life seem to shorten?
Mario Esposito
Dear Mario, in the country of chrysanthemum, longevity is no coincidence, it is a choice, a system, a culture. We do not live for a long time by genetic miracle, but by discipline, a word desuetic today in the West, where everything must be fluid, unstructured, improvised. In Japan, you eat little and well: vegetables, fish, rice, legumes, very little sugar, zero binges. Follow the ancient principle of the Hara Hachi Bu, which is not a dirty word, it means “getting up from the table when you are full of 80%”, which I have been practicing for decades too, indeed, I also stop at 60%. In our part, however, the cult is that of “I don’t care and I do an encore”, also the trio, with the result that over a third of the population is overweight. And overweight and obesity they translate into health problems. There you walk, do gardening, bend your knees every day and not to make yoga on Instagram, but to cultivate a vegetable garden, arrange the house, live the present. Here you crash on the sofa in front of the TV and, when old age arrives, you complain. But the most impressive data is another, in my opinion. Japan venerates its elderly, keeps them in high
consideration, indeed, we also say that it places them on a sort of social pedestal. There is an entire national party to celebrate its wisdom, which does not exist with us, we mistreat them. In many rural areas, the communities meet regularly in support groups, in which each one is responsible for the other. An old man is not considered a weight, but a root. It is not a scrap, but a living library, from which to draw knowledge, wisdom, advice, experience. And Italy? Well, here the situation is bleak, and this is not a perception, the statistics speak. According to Istat data, today we have over 21 thousand centenarians, which places us among the longest -running countries in the globe, immediately after Japan and France. But just look a little more deeply to understand that it is often a lonely, sad, marginal longevity without quality of life.
Why do I say this? Over 13% of the over 65 lives completely alone. 14% of the elderly have no one to ask for help, against a European average of 6%. And to make matters worse, 38% of the annual suicides in Italy are completed by people over 70 years old. These are numbers that make no noise, yet they constitute a desperate cry. They are the old people who no longer hold the weight of the invisibility. They are our fathers, our mothers, who once kept the family united and are now treated as dusty ornaments. At one time, the elderly was the pivot of the family unit. He lived with children and grandchildren, he conveyed to know, advised, said stories. Today it has been expelled from the collective story. We do not expel illegal immigrants, but we expel elderly people. Seen as a footprint, not a guide. Ours has become a society that glorifies attractiveness, compulsive youth, Instagram filters and aesthetic retouches. A world in which everything that is not young is ignored if not mocked. Perhaps we should stop looking at the Nordic countries as models to emulate, and look at the east. In Japan you live for a long time because tradition is respected, because you live in the community, because you take care of the body and soul, without having to post every lunch on Tiktok. Because the old man, there, is never alone. Never. Conservatism stretches life.
We took the narcissism motorway and we forgot who grew up. We replaced the “grandfather, tell me a story” with “Alexa, tell me how war was”.
Do we want to live longer? Well.
Let’s start by returning compared to those who were there before us, with finding the sense of the community, with re -educating the new generations to listen and not only to consumption. And maybe, every now and then, instead of running away from the idea of aging, we could learn to welcome it with gratitude. As the Japanese do, with discipline and dignity.