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HOW TO LIVE LONGER, BETTER
人生长寿而精彩的秘诀
Asterisk. (You’re still going to die, though)
星号（虽然你终究还是要死去）
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.
老年这一问题非常值得我们重视，很多时候也的确得到了我们的重视。
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.
人们很难不重视精力下降而日加虚弱、患病风险上升而认知能力下降的那个年纪。
Then there’s the unavoidable matter of the end of consciousness and the self—death, in other words—that’s drawing closer and closer.
也很难不重视那个人人有份并且日益逼近的意识和自我停止——换句话说就是死亡—— 的时刻。
It’s the rare person who can confront the final decline with flippancy or ease.
鲜有人能够轻率或者从容地面对人最后奄奄一息的瞬间。
That, as it turns out, might be our first mistake.
事实证明，这些观念可能是我们错误的开端。
Humans are not alone in facing the ultimate reckoning,
并非只有我们人类才会面对终极清算这一问题，
but we’re the only species—as far as we know—who spends its whole life knowing death is coming.
但我们是唯一，据我们所知，一个一直都知道自己会死的物种。
A clam dredged from the ocean off Iceland in 2006—and inadvertently killed by the scientists who discovered it—
2006年从冰岛附近的海域打捞上来的蛤——又被发现它的科学家不小心给弄死了——
carried growth lines on its shell indicating it had been around since 1499.
的壳上有生长线记录着它从1499年就活着了。
That was enough time for 185,055 generations of mayfly—which live as little as a day—to come and go.
这相当于蜉蝣繁衍18.5055万代的时间——蜉蝣的寿命只有一天。
Neither clam nor fly gave a thought to that mortal math.
蛤和蜉蝣都没有心思去做这道关于寿命的数学题。
Humans fall somewhere between those two extremes.
而人类的寿命位于这两个极端寿命之间。
Globally, the average life span is 71.4 years; for a few lucky people, it may exceed 100 years.
全世界人口的平均寿命是71.4岁，少部分幸运的人呢能够活到100多岁。
It has never, to science’s knowledge, exceeded the 122 years, 164 days
据科学统计，人类寿命从未超过122岁零164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.
而这位最长寿的人是Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment，他出生的时候尤利西斯·辛普森·格兰特（第18任美国总统）还在白宫，他去世的时候总统已经换成比尔·克林顿了（第42任美国总统）
