The Anti-Aging Obsession Is Missing the Point

The craze around longevity lately has been fascinating to witness. Whether it's the investments in the sector or the flood of “anti-aging” products gracing our feeds, the narrative around longevity continues to thrive. So I stopped to think: where does this desire to slow down aging or extend life come from? And where does it stop–are we trying to live forever like the Greek gods on Olympus? And are we truly prepared to live longer lives? 

I laugh, because I don’t think most people have figured out how to manage the 60–90 years they already have. (The average global life expectancy is 73 years, according to the WHO.) People today spend so much time operating in survival mode and making fear-driven decisions—even when they don’t need to. Working the wrong job just to “provide,” even when they have the privilege to choose differently. Staying in the wrong relationships because being single in this society feels daunting. Constantly worrying about how others perceive us, trying to please everyone, and not living by our truth. So much energy is drained just trying to survive, and the noise drowns out our joy, light, and vitality–a life lived below our intelligence, in my view. Would anything really change if we lived longer? Or are we just setting ourselves up for more of the same? 

Perhaps we only realize too late that we could have done things differently, and wish for a do-over. Maybe we finally recognize, after not living a brave or authentic life for too long, that we need to change… and then wish we had more time and energy to do so. In that case, maybe there’s a place for longevity and anti-aging. 

But my position is this: instead of wasting so much life and trying to extend it for a do-over, why not transform it earlier on? Why must we go through life with lower intelligence than we are capable of? 

I also think the pain of aging comes not from aging itself, but from a loss of self. “I used to run so fast, now my knees hurt.” “I used to thrive on no sleep, now I feel so tired.” “I used to have flawless skin and be so thin, now look at me.” The list goes on. We are so attached to our bodies and our minds. And from that attachment, we build our stories: I am thin, I am attractive, I am fast. So of course, when life naturally prunes these stories out of us, we feel pain. 

But this is where the beauty of yoga philosophy is evergreen. If we learn to cultivate detachment from our stories, we wouldn’t experience the same kind of loss. Or, at the very least, we’d handle it better. Everything would be taken in stride. And, as a business school student, might I add: corporations would have little room to prey on our insecurities, because they either wouldn’t exist, or we’d be excellent at managing them.

We live in a world that constantly bombards us with ways to “ease suffering” in the name of helping. But human mettle isn’t built by escaping suffering; it’s built by moving through it and learning what it has to teach. Suffering exists for our evolution–for us to reach higher states of strength, resilience, consciousness, and truth. And when we bravely face the discomfort that comes with this type of growth, our current life spans are enough for us to feel fulfilled. “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years.”