3 things centenarians regret, according to longevity researchers who talk to the world's oldest people every day
Emmanuel Rodriguez, LongeviQuest
- LongeviQuest researchers verify the ages of the world's oldest people.
- They've listened to the stories of, and picked up advice from, supercentenarians around the world.
- Here are the biggest regrets the centenarians told LongeviQuest they have.
Two longevity researchers, who talk to supercentenarians as part of their day jobs, shared the most common regrets that the world's oldest people have.
Ben Meyers and Fabrizio Villatoro work for LongeviQuest, an organization that verifies the ages of supercentenarians — people who live to the age of 110 or older — around the world. Meyers, LongeviQuest's CEO, and Villatoro, its Latin America research president, have both asked some of the world's oldest people for their longevity tips as well as the things they wish they had done differently.
Meyers said that most of the centenarians that LongeviQuest speaks to had very hard lives, given that many of them experienced huge events during the 1900s such as war, the Great Depression, and decolonization. Despite this, he said they mostly have "pretty human regrets that most people share."
But, like 102-year-old Janet Gibbs previously told BI, a positive mental attitude is thought to be key to longevity. And centenarians tend to be people who try not to stress too much, Meyers and Villatoro previously told BI, and don't let regrets get them down.
Not spending more time with family
Meyers said that not spending more time with family is a "typical" regret for centenarians.
Others regret that life's hardships or world events interrupted their stability and their ability to have more children, Villatoro said.
Working too hard
Villatoro said that Juan Vicente Pérez Mora, the oldest validated person ever from Venezuela who is 114, wishes he had worked less. Mora did hard physical labor on his family's farm from "dawn 'til dusk" for his entire working life, starting from when he was 13 or 14 years old. According to his family, he regrets that he wasn't able to try a different career, which would have enabled him to enjoy more time with his family, Villatoro said.
It's not just centenarians who wish they'd prioritized work less as they near the end of their lives; BI previously reported that many patients in hospice and palliative care regret focusing on work when they could have been enjoying spending time with their families.
Not traveling more
Evangelista Luisa López grew up in Santa Fe province, Argentina, and moved to Mar de Plata with her family, a seven-hour drive away, when she was 82. However, Villatoro said that she wished she had traveled more in her life.
Karl A Pillemer, professor of gerontology in Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, who wrote "30 Lessons for Loving: Advice from the Wisest Americans on Love, Relationships, and Marriage," wrote in 2016 for HuffPost that older Americans also regret not having traveled more, especially when they were younger. One 78-year-old that Pillemer spoke to said: "If you have to make a decision whether you want to remodel your kitchen or take a trip — well, I say, choose the trip."
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