The Illuminated Life® Workshop: Home > Workshop Sampler > Life Question 3

What personal qualities are salient in persons who live long? A team of scientists interviewed 107 Georgians all of whom were 100 years of age or older and found three such qualities. (1) A high degree of coping ability. (2) A high degree of optimism. And (3) a set of religious beliefs or some other guiding philosophy -- a philosophy of life.¹

A philosophy of life is a system of motivating beliefs -- a set of ideas and convictions that causes us to live our lives in a certain way. We are all philosophers; at least, we all have a philosophy of life although if we were asked to say what it was, we might be stumped. However, a cultural anthropologist could enter our village (so to speak), unobtrusively follow us around, and after a while compose a statement of our philosophy from what he or she saw us do or not do, from where we went or refused to go, from whom we associated with or avoided, and so on.

Some of us embrace a set of religious beliefs as a philosophy of life and try to live our lives in keeping with these beliefs or our understanding of them. Some religious orthodoxies are truly a way of life, with elaborate rules for day-to-day living. Elbert Hubbard wrote, "If your religion doesn't change you, then you had better change your religion." He seemed to be in agreement with Thomas Jefferson who wrote that he judged a person's religion by the life that person led (the same way the anthropologist would determine our philosophy).

©Ashleigh Brilliant 1975. Reprinted by permission.

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