The Key To Longevity

We often tend to see a single life as an emotional failure, and therefore a disaster. As harsh as this may sound, our society punishes people who are single. This becomes very clear when, for example, we cannot find commercial products intended for people who choose to walk the path of life solo.

We come across hundreds of offers for dream travel for two, gourmet meals for two, the ideal gifts for couples, etc. But I’m still waiting for a product that promotes the single life.

Being single is often a choice. As crazy as this may sound to a lot of people, finding a partner is not a goal for everyone. In fact, the single life can provide a state of completeness and freedom that is just as healthy and attractive as a life shared with another.

Living without waiting, living the single life

According to Emma Morano, we are under no obligation to make ourselves available for a relationship. This knowledge has even been the key to a long life for her. This woman is already the oldest person in the world, with an amazing age of 116.

When the New York Times asked her what her secret was, she came up with an answer that surprised everyone: The key to my long life is my choice to remain single. After breaking up from an unhappy marriage in 1938, Emma Morano decided that she never wanted anyone else to control her again, and that she could find everything she needed within herself.

This woman built her life the way she wanted and she didn’t let herself be captured by what society expected of her as an adult woman. However, as gerontologists tell us, there is no real key to longevity. If you were to talk to a hundred people who are all older than a hundred, you would hear a hundred different stories. Whether we live long or shorter largely depends on our genes.

The key to longevity: don’t regret getting older and live the way you want

Happiness and emotional well-being must come from ourselves and the choices we make in relation to our emotional lives. When you choose to remain single, you also decide to be brave and tolerant, because you will be confronted with a variety of opinions and beliefs.

As we mentioned earlier, our society seems to punish people who are single and deny them certain opportunities. For example, if you are not married, it is more difficult to get a loan from the bank. And there are many more such examples, all of which send a clear message to us: ‘being single is not good’.

This is the point where singleness is no longer a personal choice and instead becomes a social issue that labels us and points a big finger at us. ‘Something is wrong with you’, ‘you should find a partner’, ‘no wonder nobody loves you’.

These subtle stings can be very painful and can even make us want a partner that we don’t really love at all, or look for a way of life that we are actually not happy with ourselves. The society we live in tries to entice single people to look for a partner to lead a ‘full’ life.

But no, being single should always be a personal choice that gives us other options that allow us to explore a new world, different from the one that others say we should believe in. Ideally, we should all be free to decide for ourselves what our life means to us, and what we want to do with it, without being lumped together by a society that tells us it’s not good to be single. There are even more people like Emma, ​​who decide to be happy in their own “singleness”, and who are not looking for someone else to “rescue” them from their miserable state. Choosing to remain single does not equate to ‘ill health’, but rather the freedom and independence to live your life the way you want. That is the true key to longevity.