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Dan Buettnor’s TED talk How To Live To Be 100+ explains some of the common dominators in the world’s ‘Blue Zones’, areas where people are living to age 100 at rates up to 10 times greater than Americans are and where the life expectancy is an extra dozen years. Below is a diagram of what Buettnor’s team found when working alongside National Geographic and the National Institute on Aging:

For me, some of the most interesting points raised were that one of the most common denominators in achieving longevity was keeping active even after retirement. Interestingly, “in the Okinawan language there is not even a word for retirement. Instead there is one word that imbues your entire life, and that word is “ikigai.” And, roughly translated, it means “the reason for which you wake up in the morning.” What a great idea!

If I could summarise in one sentence why I wake up in the morning, it’s because I believe my life is worth something. I believe that there’s no point being alive unless you actually want to achieve something while you have the ability to do so! It doesn’t mean that I’ve actually achieved anything or have an all-consuming passion that’s my sole justification for existence, but I do have a willingness to get up in the morning to find exactly what that is.

The TED talk got me thinking more about how human beings try to make their life worth something. I don’t really care if I live to seventy, eighty or 114 (the age of the oldest person in the world), but what I do care about is making sure my years on this earth actually amount to something.

At a house party last night a few of us got chatting about how much has changed since our parents’ generation in terms of opportunities.

It’s now almost a given that after A-levels you work your way through university, get a career and focus on making money, and lots of it. People married younger, mortgages were easier to come by then, and so at my age my mum had her feet comfortably under the table in her marital home knowing exactly what was on the horizon for her.

I’m not saying this is a rarity today, but from my own experience the majority of my friends do not envisage ‘settling down’ for five years at least. We all have our sights set on other options, such as relentlessly climbing the career ladder, working abroad for a few years or enjoying a lifestyle where our sole concern is self-fulfilment. These options tend to be, on the whole, incompatible with marriage, mortgages and monogamy.

But how does this set us apart from previous generations? If we’re marrying later, going abroad for longer and renting for what seems like an eternity, can we still be safe in the knowledge that one day out lives will mirror the same secure and settled pattern that our parents took?

I am the first to profess my gratitude for being able to experience opportunities my mum and my nan could only have dreamed of, but I see around me seas of supposedly liberated young women anxious about their futures and disillusioned by the non-committal behaviour of men their own age.

One of my friends in her early-mid twenties has her own flat, a fulfilling job and has been seeing the same guy for nearly a year, who she is yet to gain the official label of his ‘girlfriend’. You might say this is a win-win situation as she has the benefits of a relationship without the claustrophobic trappings a steady, monogamous arrangement. But then why does she worry about her biological clock ticking and feel as though her current situation is so unsettling?

It’s clear that the most telling change in the ‘rules’ of relationships is that there really isn’t any these days. Marriage was once seen as a non-negotiable step in adult life, but more than ever people are making decisions that are the best for them rather than approaching life with a how-to manual written by previous generations.

If anything, we have more freedom than ever to choose whatever we want, whenever we want. While writing this on the Tube I came across an article by Tony Parsons in GQ magazine about ‘the modern dad’s dilemma’, notably whether to delay fatherhood as late as possible or not. Having become a dad at 25, he believes that ‘staying childless would have made me more selfish, shallow, obsessed with my own little pleasures and fulfilment. Becoming a dad in my twenties made me grow up. And it was time to grow up’.

I think the major question for my generation is how much they value their autonomy and want to delay the point at which they wave goodbye to it forever and begin living for others.

Photo via This Is Bossi @ Flickr

When I woke up this morning and read dozens of headlines announcing Osama bin Laden’s killing and President Obama’s assertion that “justice had been done”, I found it hard not to feel uneasiness at celebrating death, regardless of whether it’s from a man who faciliated the deaths of thousands.

Lots of people around the world will feel a genuine sense of relief and happiness at Obama’s efforts to bring Osama bin Laden to pay for his role in 9/11. I agree that we should be happy a man responsble for such actions is no more, but why can’t people question WHY he held the views he did, and why it’s a safe bet that he will not be the last person to want to ‘punish’ the Western world?

A survivor of the Twin Towers attack, Harry Waizer, sums up the conflict between congratulating a person’s death and wanting justice for the atrocities of September 11th: “If this means there is one less death in the future, then I’m glad for that [...] But I just can’t find it in me to be glad one more person is dead, even if it is Osama Bin Laden.”

Here are some interesting opinions I’ve read in the past hour or two on the killing of bin Laden:

I am genuinely scared that we can so easily see a person’s death as a reason for celebration and dancing without looking at the bigger picture. Why can’t people think critically about the motives surrounding bin Laden and any other human being who feels strongly enough to want to enact such an atrocity? Why can’t we question the easiness with which a president can assert justice can be carried out in a foreign country with no trial?

Exclaiming with happiness about the death of one terrorist is all well and good, but it should be done so with at least a grave nod to considering the implications of bin Laden’s death around the world and how it does not, by any means, signal an end to unjustifiable wars and problematic foreign policy.

At the risk of sounding like a bleeding-heart Liberal, we should only truly have cause for celebration when troops pull out of Afghanistan and war is seen as a barbaric practice witnessed only in history books rather than today’s newspapers.

In President Obama’s speech announcing bin Laden’s death, he employed several instances of rhetoric surrounding the concept of “unity”:

On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family. We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice. [...] Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I look forward to the day that all countries can identify as united with common interests and shared hope in what can be achieved in the absence of nationalistic superiority, “us” and “them” mentality and irrational religious extremism.

What can I say that could possibly sum up my time in Berlin? I fell in love with the city, got bitten by the travel bug and am now more determined than ever to visit all of the major European cities.

Despite the fact that the best nightclubs have some kind of unspoken anti-tourist policy, I managed to experience one night of proper Berlin nightlife in a dingy, derelict, smoke-filled cavern otherwise known as About:Blank. Thankfully me and my friend Sam were accompanied by two German guys we met after we had been turned away from Berghain (having turned up a bit too late on Sunday night!), so they did some smooth talking and we got in! The first sign that this place wasn’t your average nightclub was th at our cameras was confiscated and bags throughly frisked before we had even got through the door! We were even let in for free because we got there near closing, just in time for a freaking amazing DJ set by Jascha Baruch.

We also had an amazing tour with Sandeman’s ‘Home of the Famous Free-Tour’, which gave us a great tour covering the history behind sights such as The Brandenburg Gate, The Reichstag, Luftwaffe HQ, The Book Burning Memorial, The Old Royal Boulevard and Museum Island.

What I loved most about Berlin was the completely undefinable vibe it has when you walk around its neighbourhoods. The streets are invariably wide, empty, dusty and lined with graffiti and massive mounds of mud and bricks. Metres from the main Humboldt University, there’s barely anyone around… it was as if we had walked onto an abandoned film set and none of the extras had turned up!

Our room at the Grand Hostel, Berlin

One of the great pieces of art along the East Side Gallery.

We all know the story. Virginal girl, pure and sweet, trapped in the body of a swan. She desires freedom but only true love can break the spell. Her wish is nearly granted in the form of a prince, but before he can declare his love her lustful twin, the black swan, tricks and seduces him. Devastated the white swan leaps of a cliff killing herself and, in death, finds freedom.–Thomas Leroy, Black Swan

I was utterly blown away by Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, a dance thriller centred around ballet dancer Nina’s attempts to carry off the dual role of White and Black in Swan Lake. Her artistic director Thomas Leroy believes she needs to let go of her unrealistic aims for perfection; “You could be brilliant, but you’re a coward.” This obsession with fulfilling her dream (“I just want to be perfect”) ultimately leads to her losing her own mind as she sinks deeper and deeper into her preparation for the role.

Back in her dressing room during a break, Nina sees Lily, the uninhibited and passionate new dancer and her closest dance rival, in the black swan costume. Within seconds they are fighting about Nina’s ability to play the black swan herself and suddenly she smashes Lily into a mirror. ‘Lily’ then transforms into Nina’s dark, sultry doppelganger and it is in effect an aspect of Nina herself trying to strangle her! Once more turning back into dancer Lily, Nina believes she has killed her and hurriedly hides the body before going on stage to perform an exceptional performance as the black swan herself.

This part of the film was possibly one of my favourite cinematic moments I’ve ever seen, as we see Nina finally becoming the embodiment of the black swan, complete with feathers and reddish swan eyes. I couldn’t find any stills of her actual metamorphosis into the black swan during the performance, so the two shown below will have to do!

***SPOILER***: Nina embodies the white and black swan so perfectly that she is consumed by the story itself. As the quote at the top of this post mentions, only in death can the white swan find freedom. And, only in death, does Nina finally achieve her goal of perfection. Seconds before the final frame of the film is drenched in bright white light, her final words, “I felt it — perfect. It was perfect” are almost drowned out by the audience’s rapturous cheers for her.