Revaluate Longevity and Live Forever

In talking about longevity，people often think it is a matter that should be considered and cared about only by the “hoary-haired generation”. And as a matter of fact，usually, those who are interested in longevity are also old people in their evening of life. As they do not have many days left, their concern of longevity is just for getting more days in their natural span of life. For ordinary younglings，only when they have already reached that stage do they begin to have some sense of longevity.

Marx said once, Time is the domain for ability and all development.

The chief reason why ordinary people lack the sense of longevity is that they do not quite understand the great value of longevity. In the eyes of ordinary people, longevity is nothing but a longer period of old people’s late years，but in fact, the value of longevity is far from that.

Judging from many aspects，the value of longevity is extremely great and inestimable.

First，judging from human’s need. Engels pointed out long ago：A person first needs survival，secondly needs enjoyment and thirdly needs development. A person must try to survive, or else nothing can be talked about；Second，he needs enjoyment，and should not only be content with survival；Thirdly，there must be development: development of character，development of intelligence and development of capability… Longevity is the essentially decisive factor determining the three general needs. Life span is the individual’s survival time. Survival is a person’s general fundamental need; the level of longevity concerns directly how much this fundamental need has been met. Once life ends, the right of existence will be lost completely. Longevity also concerns the right of enjoyment. The longer your life is, the more you can enjoy life. The length of the life also determines the degree of enjoyment of the right of development. Fundamentally, both development of the person’s own quality and development of his career depend on the length of life. Especially in an era characterized by life-long education and life-long learning, the length of the life is proportional to the level of ability and level of quality. The longer the life is, the higher the final ability will be, and the higher the personal quality will be.

It is obvious that a long life determines the degree of a person’s right to existence, his right to enjoyment and his right to development, determines the satisfaction degree of the three major needs, namely survival, enjoyment and development, and it directly concerns his achievement in academic career, occupation career and everything in life. So we say，longevity is the total and general manifestation of the people’s fundamental interest, and the per capita life is the highest indicator in judging the degree of realization of the whole fundamental interest of the people.

Not only judging from human need, we say longevity has a great value without comparison；But judging from great achievement, longevity also has a great value without comparison. In my books Secrets of Great Achievements and Ability Panic, I mentioned the “Dacheng” (great achievement) concept many times. Dacheng refers to all-round great achievement, namely, great achievement in academic career, great achievement in occupation career and great achievement in life. In all these three major aspects, longevity plays the most essential and decisive role.