MM Lee Kuan Yew On Aging (ii)
Then one day I was at the home of my colleague, Mr Rajaratnam, meeting foreign correspondents including some from the London Times and they took a picture of me and I had a big belly like that (puts his hands in front of his belly), a beer belly. I felt no, no, this will not do. So I started playing more golf, hit hundreds of balls on the practice tee. But this didn't go down. There was only one way it could go down: consume less, burn up more.
Another turning point came when - this was 1976, after the general election - I was feeling tired. I was breathing deeply at the Istana, on the lawns. My daughter, who at that time just graduating as a doctor, said, 'What are you trying to do?' I said, 'I feel an effort to breathe in more oxygen.' She said: 'Don't play golf. Run. Aerobics..' So she gave me a book , quite a famous book and, then, very current in America on how you score aerobic points swimming, running, whatever it is, cycling. I looked at it sceptically. I wasn't very keen on running. I was keen on golf. So I said,'Let's try'. So in-between golf shots while playing on my own, sometimes nine holes at the Istana, I would try and walk fast between shots. Then I began to run between shots. And I felt better. After a while, I said: 'Okay, after my golf, I run.' And after a few years, I said, 'Golf takes so long. The running takes 15 minutes. Let's cut out the golf and let's run.'
I think the most important thing in ageing is you got to understand yourself. And the knowledge now is all there.
When I was growing up, the knowledge wasn't there. I had to get the knowledge from friends, from doctors. But perhaps the most important bit of knowledge that the doctor gave me was one day, when I said, 'Look, I'm feeling slower and sluggish.' So he gave me a medical encyclopaedia and he turned the pages to ageing. I read it up and it was illuminating. A lot of it was difficult jargon but I just skimmed through to get the gist of it.
As you grow, you reach 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 and then, thereafter, you are on a gradual slope down physically.
Mentally, you carry on and on and on until I don't know what age, but mathematicians will tell you that they know their best output is when they're in their 20s and 30s when your mental energy is powerful and you haven't lost many neurons. That's what they tell me.
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to be continued...
Another turning point came when - this was 1976, after the general election - I was feeling tired. I was breathing deeply at the Istana, on the lawns. My daughter, who at that time just graduating as a doctor, said, 'What are you trying to do?' I said, 'I feel an effort to breathe in more oxygen.' She said: 'Don't play golf. Run. Aerobics..' So she gave me a book , quite a famous book and, then, very current in America on how you score aerobic points swimming, running, whatever it is, cycling. I looked at it sceptically. I wasn't very keen on running. I was keen on golf. So I said,'Let's try'. So in-between golf shots while playing on my own, sometimes nine holes at the Istana, I would try and walk fast between shots. Then I began to run between shots. And I felt better. After a while, I said: 'Okay, after my golf, I run.' And after a few years, I said, 'Golf takes so long. The running takes 15 minutes. Let's cut out the golf and let's run.'
I think the most important thing in ageing is you got to understand yourself. And the knowledge now is all there.
When I was growing up, the knowledge wasn't there. I had to get the knowledge from friends, from doctors. But perhaps the most important bit of knowledge that the doctor gave me was one day, when I said, 'Look, I'm feeling slower and sluggish.' So he gave me a medical encyclopaedia and he turned the pages to ageing. I read it up and it was illuminating. A lot of it was difficult jargon but I just skimmed through to get the gist of it.
As you grow, you reach 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 and then, thereafter, you are on a gradual slope down physically.
Mentally, you carry on and on and on until I don't know what age, but mathematicians will tell you that they know their best output is when they're in their 20s and 30s when your mental energy is powerful and you haven't lost many neurons. That's what they tell me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
to be continued...
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