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HOW TO LIVE LONGER, BETTER
人生長壽而精彩的秘訣
Asterisk. (You’re still going to die, though)
星號（雖然你終究還是要死去）
By Jeffrey Kluger and Alexandra Sifferlin
文Jeffrey Kluger/Alexandra Sifferlin
Old age demands to be taken very seriously—and it usually gets its way.
老年這一問題非常值得我們重視，很多時候也的確得到了我們的重視。
It’s hard to be cavalier about a time of life defined by loss of vigor, increasing frailty, rising disease risk and falling cognitive faculties.
人們很難不重視精力下降而日加虛弱、患病風險上升而認知能力下降的那個年紀。
Then there’s the unavoidable matter of the end of consciousness and the self—death, in other words—that’s drawing closer and closer.
也很難不重視那個人人有份并且日益逼近的意識和自我停止——換句話說就是死亡—— 的時刻。
It’s the rare person who can confront the final decline with flippancy or ease.
鮮有人能夠輕率或者從容地面對人最后奄奄一息的瞬間。
That, as it turns out, might be our first mistake.
事實證明，這些觀念可能是我們錯誤的開端。
Humans are not alone in facing the ultimate reckoning,
并非只有我們人類才會面對終極清算這一問題，
but we’re the only species—as far as we know—who spends its whole life knowing death is coming.
但我們是唯一，據我們所知，一個一直都知道自己會死的物種。
A clam dredged from the ocean off Iceland in 2006—and inadvertently killed by the scientists who discovered it—
2006年從冰島附近的海域打撈上來的蛤——又被發現它的科學家不小心給弄死了——
carried growth lines on its shell indicating it had been around since 1499.
的殼上有生長線記錄著它從1499年就活著了。
That was enough time for 185,055 generations of mayfly—which live as little as a day—to come and go.
這相當于蜉蝣繁衍18.5055萬代的時間——蜉蝣的壽命只有一天。
Neither clam nor fly gave a thought to that mortal math.
蛤和蜉蝣都沒有心思去做這道關于壽命的數學題。
Humans fall somewhere between those two extremes.
而人類的壽命位于這兩個極端壽命之間。
Globally, the average life span is 71.4 years; for a few lucky people, it may exceed 100 years.
全世界人口的平均壽命是71.4歲，少部分幸運的人呢能夠活到100多歲。
It has never, to science’s knowledge, exceeded the 122 years, 164 days
據科學統計，人類壽命從未超過122歲零164天，
lived by Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who was born when Ulysses S. Grant was in the White House and died when Bill Clinton lived there.
而這位最長壽的人是Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment，他出生的時候尤利西斯·辛普森·格蘭特（第18任美國總統）還在白宮，他去世的時候總統已經換成比爾·克林頓了（第42任美國總統）
