Blogocentric Formulations

Young Mind? Split the Difference?

"30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  | May 20

Prompt ▼

If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you choose?

As tempting as it would be to indulge my vanity and choose to have a thirty-year old body for the final sixty years of my life, I'd choose to keep my thirty-year-old mind instead. Yeah, that's right. I'd forego all the Dorian Gray jokes, then wondering whether I'm some kind of immortal vampire, all the money I'd make as a spokesperson for some anti-aging supplement, and instead I'd choose to have a sharper mind and the full clarity of a brain at its prime.

Mostly, what it comes down to is the kinds of activities that I enjoy. If I were a more outdoorsy person or enjoyed physical activity, I could totally understand wanting the resilient body of a thirty-year old so you could run a marathon every year for sixty years, or so you can play pick-up basketball games every weekend with your friends forever. But the things that I enjoy doing (reading, writing, watching films, thinking, etc.) are all things that don't necessarily require a clear mind, but are definitely enhanced by one. I'm the kind of person who can enjoy just sitting there and reading a good book, and gets an enormous amount of satisfaction out of thinking through a problem, or typing at a computer and making up stories. I could do those things forever, so I'd love to have the mental acuity to be able to continue doing those things as well at 80 as I was in my prime at 30.

These kinds of "either/or" questions always make me wonder whether my answer would change if the particulars of the scenario changed. For example, would I still take the mind over body option if I knew I was only going to live to be sixty? What if it was the body and mind of a forty-year-old? What ratio would I choose if I could take 60 years off my mind and body (e.g., would I rather have an unbalanced 30-year mind and 90-year body, or would I split the difference and go with a 60-year mind and 60-year body at the age of 90)? Honestly, I think that would be kind of a fun way to go through life, if rather than a dramatic 60-year difference between one or the other, if I was just perpetually 30 years younger in mind and body than my chronological age. To be physically and mentally 30 at age 60, 45 at age 75, 50 at 80, etc. would be awesome.