Living Well

“You might be able to live forever, but what if the world becomes uninhabitable in your hundredth year of feeling biologically eighteen?”

Untitled, Arden Yum

Arden Yum is the 22-year-old writer of Ad Hoc, a weekly newsletter about the interplay of culture and identity. She graduated from Yale with a degree in Cognitive Science in May.

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When I was a kid, I heard about the conspiracy that Walt Disney had frozen his corpse before he died, in hopes that when medicine and technology greatly improved, someone would thaw his body, and he would come back to life. This story haunted me because I believed that his resurrection could really happen. I was shocked that, for this CEO, life seemed so malleable. Death was something you could postpone.

Now, tech billionaires in Silicon Valley want to optimize their bodies and brains in order to maximize longevity. In the Bay Area, Bryan Johnson is trying to live forever. He spends $2 million a year on “Project Blueprint,” a set of procedures, guidelines, and treatments to reverse aging and make it to 150 years old. Johnson is forty-seven. He has a team of thirty doctors that watch over him as he infuses blood from his son, injects his face with fat (to regain a “youthful” look), and eats dinner at eleven in the morning (which includes eighteen different supplements). Peter Thiel takes human growth hormone pills. Sam Altman takes diabetes drug metformin. Andrew Huberman, Professor of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford, has built an entire podcast empire on “science-based tools for better sleep, health, focus, and performance.” (I used to listen to episodes of Huberman Lab until that Cut article came out about his concerning personal life and I could no longer consume his content with a good conscience. Your body and your brain can be at peak performance, but that doesn’t exempt you from being an asshole.)

The Silicon Valley CEOs surely want to keep their brains and bodies intact so that they can oversee the systems and machines they’ve invented as they seep into every crevice of our lives. They want to live forever because they are the self-proclaimed kings of the world. What about us? I’m not sure if I want to live as long as possible. But when I do feel weary about my health (after a night of bad sleep, or an evening of drinking), I often seek a solution in the aisles of a grocery store. The caffeinated electrolyte drink in a shiny can nurses me back to life.

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I don’t know exactly how it happened, but at some point in my high school career, I became aware of wellness. The Kardashians were promoting powder blue Sugarbear Hair gummies that fueled their long, luscious tresses. Juice shops were popping up around New York City — I accompanied my friends who bought ten dollar kale-celery-spinach concoctions during our forty minute lunch break at the Juice Generation. I didn’t think about my health that much. After school, I used to go to the drugstore and buy two packs of M&M’s, one peanut and one pretzel, and eat them as I completed my homework at my desk. I regularly drank Starbucks venti caramel macchiatos after lacrosse practice, even though I wasn’t technically allowed to drink caffeine. I don’t remember if I had never heard about added sugar and ultraprocessed foods, or I just didn’t care. I exercised only because I had gym class, or because I had joined sports teams to extend structured time with my friends. I lived in a blissful world, ignorant to optimization culture. This was a decade before the Hailey Bieber strawberry smoothie hit the Erewhon cafes. No one had ever heard the word “prebiotic.” The only kinds of sodas you could buy at the store were owned by Pepsi or Coca Cola.

Then, the pandemic happened. I became acquainted with my kitchen. I had grown up with my mother’s functional, delicious meals that kept our household of four well-fed. Covid introduced sourdough starter, banana bread, and DIY poke bowls. We couldn’t eat out, so we embarked on ambitious food projects at home. Food became something greater than sustenance. It was a reprieve from boredom, an escape from the grim reality, a source of nourishment and joy. It wasn’t just me — everyone became obsessed with food and exercise.

I discovered Chloe Ting. My spring track season was cancelled, so I pivoted to alternative forms of exercise. I began to work out not to perform the best in a competition, but to tighten and adjust the way that I looked. My bedroom floor became my workout studio. On a lavender yoga mat, I discovered the plethora of HIIT, pilates, yoga, and strength training that exists on YouTube. I did Yoga With Adrienne’s thirty-day challenge at the beginning of the year. I rotated my arms in tiny circles with Blogilates, who also sold her own workout apparel line and branded mats. These workout influencers would tell me that I was doing great, that I was getting so strong, that I only had eight more reps (“and another eight…you’ll thank me later!”). I wondered how many people they were addressing. For some, it was in the millions. Then I remembered that in real life, they were in a room in a quarantined house, just like me. They were talking to themselves.

After the virus that threatened the livelihoods of people across the planet, the world could have gone two ways. Once we saw death up close and were terrified by its swift finality, we could have decided to enjoy the life we had because it was precious and unpredictable. We’d party more, work less. We’d make high-risk, potentially rewarding decisions. We would live for the present version of ourselves, because that was the only one that was guaranteed. Or, we could be paralyzed by the idea of our fragile mortality. We’d console ourselves by pretending that there was a way out, through science, to live forever. This is the path we chose. Ever since the return to “normalcy,” I’ve noticed an uptick in people trying to extend their lifespans. We want to control as many factors as possible to shield ourselves from the unknown. Wellness is one way of accomplishing this.

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Five years after the pandemic, I have a new routine. I take two dome-shaped, purple probiotic gummies every morning. I apply sunscreen religiously. I prioritize spending time outside, reading books, and practicing movement. I recently started spooning my dad’s creatine powder into tiny glasses of water before I go to the gym. I eat whatever vegetables are in season. If I want to guarantee a good night’s sleep, I have a tablespoon of magnesium before bed.

These are all healthy habits. As an individual case study, I seem to be someone who takes care of themselves, who optimizes for digestion and muscle growth and sleep. I will live for a long time. My friends and I like to walk around organic grocery stores and examine the elixirs and vitamins, compare hair growth serums and running shoes and meditation apps. Our generation is obsessed with wellness. The word “protein” is in countless videos, article titles, and packaged goods in the grocery store. But I have this sinking feeling that the craze around “self-care” has side effects we aren’t fully aware of. If I choose to stay at home on a Friday night to journal, do a face mask, and sip on a cup of decaffeinated tea, what am I missing out on in the name of “preserving my peace?” I am an introvert, but I actually feel my best when I am pushed outside of myself to talk to strangers and discover newness. Wellness makes it easy, even favorable, to remain safe and sheltered.

Most of the discourse around our generation is spouted from the top down. Millennial journalists, in particular, seem to be hung up over the idea that our generation is not having enough sex. High schoolers are no longer drinking alcohol. Recreational drug use was the lowest it’s ever been in 2024. They attribute this trend toward social isolation to increased digital consumption, pornography, and moral panic. After reading these kinds of articles, I feel a strange unease and distance from the alleged description of my peers as internet-addicted, sexually-stunted — excuse my language — losers? Derek Thomopson has named the 2000s the Anti-Social Century. If our generation isn’t drinking, partying, or hanging out, then what are we doing?

The idea of longevity is closely intertwined with wellness. Lifespans are stretching out, so the timelines humans impose on themselves to reach certain societal milestones feel less rushed. People are staying in school longer, living with their parents after graduating college, and putting off their driver’s license tests (I live in New York City, and I didn’t get my license until I was twenty-one). San Diego State University Psychology Professor Jean Twenge calls this the “slow-life factor.” The basis of the theory is that our generation is growing up slower than our predecessors. We are postponing the development of romance and sexuality. We are getting married and having kids later. It doesn’t help that we are spending so much time alone. Wellness culture kindles our obsession with control, and isolation enables it.

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My TikTok feed is filled with people on a mission to de-influence their young, impressionable audience from consuming alcohol. A number of them feature self-proclaimed “former party girls” who took it too far in high school, or in their early twenties, and are now practicing a sober lifestyle. They have tested their limits and definitively decided that alcohol does more harm than good. They rattle off the side effects of drinking: decreased metabolism, cancer risk, trouble sleeping. Alcohol is a poison, they say. Even a glass of wine with dinner can trigger harmful effects. Instead, they preach lifestyles of green juice and non-alcoholic aperitifs (if you must attend a happy hour to maintain your social life). They might even have a link to Ghia in their TikTok shop.

Influencers often speak with the authority of a doctor or an expert when they are merely drawing from their personal experiences. While I think the retired party girl has a point, I am also concerned about the precedent physical health has over mental health at this moment in time. Sure, we preserve our bodies by staying at home and drinking Poppi soda, but alcohol (for better or for worse) is an elixir that has promoted play, social connection, and the release of feel-good chemicals (before the inevitable crash) for millennia.

From the tech billionaires to the abstinent former party girls, I think we’re all yearning for a sense of control in a time when everything feels temporary, uncertain, and on the brink of ruin. My whole academic career, I have been able to match input to output. If I studied hard for a math exam, or labored over an English paper, I would be rewarded with an ‘A.’ Even in sports, if I trained hard for a race, I could run a new personal best in the 200-meter sprint. The promise of a favorable result (given that I put in the requisite amount of effort) was deeply satisfying in a way that I didn’t fully appreciate because I knew no alternative. In the adult world, I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that there is often an input-output mismatch. My friends and I have experienced how hard it is to find a job, even after pouring hours into cover letter writing, networking, and interviewing. Dating more frequently and intentionally does not necessarily get you closer to finding a partner.

Wellness has a funny way of making you feel like the architect of your own prosperity. If you eat right, exercise frequently, lift weights, wear sunscreen, take supplements, manage stress, and sleep eight uninterrupted hours each night, you will become the optimal version of yourself. But we forget that there are so many factors outside of our control. What if heart disease runs in your family, no matter how much you watch your sodium intake? What if the supplements don’t contain the vitamins and superfoods they claim to? And even if they do, who knows how well they actually work? The focus on individual longevity can feel like a coping mechanism against the looming threat of global warming. Sure, you might be able to live forever, but what if the world becomes uninhabitable in your hundredth year of feeling biologically eighteen?

Since we are young, we are told to prepare for our futures. In school, we study hard and earn good grades to gain admission into selective colleges. In college, we hustle to secure high-paying jobs. In our early twenties, we work long hours and exhaust our physical and mental capacities because this is the last time in our lives we’ll ever have this much energy. We are all, presumptuously, working toward a vision that our future selves will thank us for. I can make out the shapes of this future, though the edges are blurred. It includes a happy nuclear family, a home that I own (maybe a secondary vacation home if I’m lucky), an impressive career, a thriving social life, and a vague sense of fulfillment. I will not be worried about having enough money to retire, or to send my kids to college.

This future in which I am healthy, safe, and well-off is very appealing. It soothes me when I think about all of the uncertainty of my twenties softening into a “real life.” But I have never stopped to think about if it’s really what I want. Why do our dream lives have to be in the future? What happens if the visions never crystalize into reality?

I think life is extraordinarily, unironically beautiful. I’m grateful for every day that I get to step outside and experience the energy of the city, even in its humid, sticky, pungent state. Yesterday I went on a walk in Central Park and had to squint hard to remind myself that I wasn’t looking at a picture. The trees were real, the people were walking toward me, I could feel the sun on my face. I wasn’t thinking about my biological age or the wrinkles I’ll develop on my forehead or what my body will look like in twenty years. I felt time slow until it almost stood still.

I have been thinking more and more about how it feels like a waste of the present to make choices and sacrifices only to serve my future self. I don’t want to be ninety and wish that I had more fun when I was in my twenties (or thirties!). There has to be a balance between enjoying life and taking measures to elongate it. In the post-pandemic era, choosing to be present is a form of resistance. I want to live a long, healthy life, but I also want it to be filled with fun and newness and revelation. I have no interest in existing in this world longer than I am supposed to. I will continue to drink the glass of wine, or let a conversation keep me awake all night, even if it takes a few months off of my life. At the very end, I hope that I will look back at my younger self and be thankful that I did. Joy will triumph over control.