'Stay interested in the world, take on a
challenge':
Singapore Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew
This is Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's advice on
ageing the best way one can. Yesterday, he shared some
personal insights into how he himself deals with
ageing. Here is the transcript of his remarks.
MY CONCERN today is, what is it I can tell you which
can add to your knowledge about ageing and what ageing
societies can do.
You know more about this subject than I do. A l=
ot
of
it is out in the media, Internet and books. So I
thought the best way would be to take a personal
standpoint and tell you how I approach this question
of ageing.
If I cast my mind back, I can see turning point=
s in
my
physical and mental health. You know, when you're
young, I didn't bother, I assumed good health was
God-given and would always be there. When I was about
- '57 that was - I was about 34, we were competing in
elections, and I was really fond of drinking beer and
smoking.
And after the election campaign, in Victoria
Memorial
Hall - we had won the election, the City Council
election - I couldn't thank the voters because I had
lost my voice. I'd been smoking furiously.
I'd take a packet of 10 to deceive myself, but I'd run
through the packet just sitting on the stage, watching
the crowd, getting the feeling, the mood before I
speak. In other words, there were three speeches a
night. Three speeches a night, 30 cigarettes, a lot of
beer after that, and the voice was gone.
I remember I had a case in Kuching, Sarawak. So I took
the flight and I felt awful. I had to make up my mind
whether I was going to be an effective campaigner and
a lawyer, in which case I cannot destroy my voice, and
I can't go on. So I stopped smoking. It was a
tremendous deprivation because I was addicted to it.
And I used to wake up dreaming...the nightmare =
was
I
resumed smoking.
But I made a choice and said, if I continue thi=
s, I
will not be able to do my job. I didn't know anything
about cancer of the throat or oesophagus or the lungs,
etc. But it turned out it had many other deleterious
effects.
Strangely enough after that, I became very alle=
rgic,
hyper-allergic to smoking, so much so that I would
plead with my Cabinet ministers not to smoke in the
Cabinet room. You want to smoke, please go out,
because I am allergic.
Then one day I was at the home of my colleague, Mr
Rajaratnam, meeting foreign correspondents including
some from the London Times and they took a picture of
me and I had a big belly like that (puts his hands in
front of his belly), a beer belly. I felt no, no, this
will not do.
So I started playing more golf, hit hundreds of
balls
on the practice tee. But this didn't go down. There
was only one way it could go down: consume less, burn
up more.
Another turning point came when -this was 1976,
after
the general election - I was feeling tired. I was
breathing deeply at the Istana, on the lawns. My
daughter, who at that time just graduating as a
doctor, said: 'What are you trying to do?' I said: 'I
feel an effort to breathe in more oxygen.' She said:
'Don't play golf. Run. Aerobics.'
So she gave me a book, quite a famous book and, then,
very current in America on how you score aerobic
points swimming, running, whatever it is, cycling. I
looked at it sceptically. I wasn't very keen on
running. I was keen on golf. So I said, 'Let's try'.
So in-between golf shots while playing on my own,
sometimes nine holes at the Istana, I would try and
walk fast between shots. Then I began to run between
shots. And I felt better. After a while, I said:
'Okay, after my golf, I run.' And after a few years, I
said: 'Golf takes so long. The running takes 15
minutes. Let's cut out the golf and let's run.'
I think the most important thing in ageing is you got
to understand yourself. And the knowledge now is all
there. When I was growing up, the knowledge wasn't
there. I had to get the knowledge from friends, from
doctors.
But perhaps the most important bit of knowledge
that
the doctor gave me was one day, when I said: 'Look,
I'm feeling slower and sluggish.' So he gave me a
medical encyclopaedia and he turned the pages to
ageing. I read it up and it was illuminating. A lot of
it was difficult jargon but I just skimmed through to
get the gist of it.
As you grow, you reach 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 a=
nd
then, thereafter, you are on a gradual slope down
physically. Mentally, you carry on and on and on until
I don't know what age, but mathematicians will tell
you that they know their best output is when they're
in their 20s and 30s when your mental energy is
powerful and you haven't lost many neurons. That's
what they tell me.
So, as you acquire more knowledge, you then cra=
ft a
programme for yourself to maximise what you have. It's
just common sense. I never planned to live till 85 or
84. I just didn't think about it. I said: 'Well, my
mother died when she was 74, she had a stroke. My
father died when he was 94.'
But I saw him, and he lived a long life, well,
maybe
it was his DNA. But more than that, he swam every day
and he kept himself busy. He was working for the Shell
company. He was in charge, he was a superintendent of
an oil depot. When he retired, he started becoming a
salesman. So people used to tell me: 'Your father is
selling watches at BP de Silva.'
My father was then living with me. But it kept =
him
busy. He had that routine: He meets people, he sells
watches, he buys and sells all kinds of semi-precious
stones, he circulates coins. And he keeps going.
But at 87, 88, he fell, going down the steps from his
room to the dining room, broke his arm, three months
incapacitated. Thereafter, he couldn't go back to
swimming.
Then he became wheelchair-bound. Then it became=
a
problem because my house was constructed that way. So
my brother - who's a doctor and had a flat (one-level)
house - took him in. And he lived on till 94. But
towards the end, he had gradual loss of mental powers.
So my calculations, I'm somewhere between 74 and 94.
And I've reached the halfway point now. But have I?
Well, 1996 when I was 73, I was cycling and I felt
tightening on the neck. Oh, I must retire today. So I
stopped. Next day, I returned to the bicycle. After
five minutes it became worse.
So I said, no, no, this is something serious, it's got
to do with the blood vessels. Rung up my doctor, who
said, 'Come tomorrow'. Went tomorrow, he checked me,
and said: 'Come back tomorrow for an angiogram.' I
said: 'What's that?' He said: 'We'll pump something in
and we'll see whether the coronary arteries are
cleared or blocked.'
I was going to go home. But an MP who was a
cardiologist happened to be around, so he came in and
said: 'What are you doing here?' I said: 'I've got
this.' He said: 'Don't go home. You stay here tonight.
I've sent patients home and they never came back. Just
stay here. They'll put you on the monitor. They'll
watch your heart. And if anything, an emergency
arises, they will take you straight to the theatre.
You go home. You've got no such monitor. You may never
come back.'
So I stayed there. Pumped in the dye, yes it wa=
s
blocked, the left circumflex, not the critical, lead
one. So that's lucky for me.
Two weeks later, I was walking around,I felt it=
's
coming back. Yes it has come back, it had occluded. So
this time they said: 'We'll put in a stent.'
I'm one of the first few in Singapore to have the
stent, so it was a brand new operation. Fortunately,
the man who invented the stent was out here selling
his stent.
He was from San Jose, La Jolla something or the
other.
So my doctor got hold of him and he supervised the
operation. He said put the stent in. My doctor did the
operation, he just watched it all and then that's
that. That was before all this problem about lining
the stent to make sure that it doesn't occlude and
create a disturbance.
So at each stage, I learnt something more about
myself
and I stored that. I said: 'Oh, this is now a danger
point.'
So all right, cut out fats, change diet, went to
see a
specialist in Boston, Massachusetts General Hospital.
He said: 'Take statins.' I said: 'What's that?' He
said: '(They) help to reduce your cholesterol.'
My doctors were concerned. They said: 'You don't need
it. Your cholesterol levels are okay.' Two years
later, more medical evidence came out. So the doctors
said: 'Take statins.'
Had there been no angioplasty, had I not known that
something was up and I cycled on, I might have gone at
74 like my mother. So I missed that deadline.
So next deadline: my father's fall at 87.
I'm very careful now because sometimes when I turn
around too fast, I feel as if I'm going to get off
balance. So my daughter, a neurologist, she took me to
the NNI, there's this nerve conduction test, put
electrodes here and there.
The transmission of the messages between the feet and
the brain has slowed down.
So all the exercise, everything, effort put in,=
I'm
fit, I swim, I cycle. But I can't prevent this losing
of conductivity of the nerves and this transmission.
So just go slow.
So when I climb up the steps, I have no problem.
When
I go down the steps, I need to be sure that I've got
something I can hang on to, just in case. So it's a
constant process of adjustment.
But I think the most important single lesson I
learnt
in life was that if you isolate yourself, you're done
for. The human being is a social animal - he needs
stimuli, he needs to meet people, to catch up with the
world.
I don't much like travel but I travel very
frequently
despite the jet lag, because I get to meet people of
great interest to me, who will help me in my work as
chairman of our GIC. So I know, I'm on several boards
of banks, international advisory boards of banks, of
oil companies and so on.
And I meet them and I get to understand what's<=
br>
happening in the world, what has changed since I was
here one month ago, one year ago. I go to India, I go
to China.
And that stimuli brings me to the world of toda=
y.
I'm
not living in the world, when I was active, more
active 20, 30 years ago. So I tell my wife. She woke
up late today. I said: 'Never mind, you come along by
12 o'clock. I go first.'
If you sit back - because part of the ending pa=
rt
of
the encyclopaedia which I read was very depressing -
as you get old, you withdraw from everything and then
all you will have is your bedroom and the photographs
and the furniture that you know, and that's your
world. So if you've got to go to hospital, the doctor
advises you to bring some photographs so that you'll
know you're not lost in a different world, that this
is like your bedroom.
I'm determined that I will not, as long as I ca=
n,
to
be reduced, to have my horizons closed on me like
that. It is the stimuli, it is the constant
interaction with people across the world that keeps me
aware and alive to what's going on and what we can do
to adjust to this different world.
In other words, you must have an interest in life. If
you believe that at 55, you're retiring, you're going
to read books, play golf and drink wine, then I think
you're done for. So statistically they will show you
that all the people who retire and lead sedentary
lives, the pensioners die off very quickly.
So we now have a social problem with medical
sciences,
new procedures, new drugs, many more people are going
to live long lives. If the mindset is that when I
reach retirement age 62, I'm old, I can't work
anymore, I don't have to work, I just sit back, now is
the time I'll enjoy life, I think you're making the
biggest mistake of your life.
After one month, or after two months, even if you go
travelling with nothing to do, with no purpose in
life, you will just degrade, you'll go to seed.
The human being needs a challenge, and my advic=
e to
every person in Singapore and elsewhere: Keep yourself
interested, have a challenge.
If you're not interested in the world and the w=
orld
is
not interested in you, the biggest punishment a man
can receive is total isolation in a dungeon, black and
complete withdrawal of all stimuli, that's real
torture.
So when I read that people believe, Singaporeans
say:
'Oh, 62 I'm retiring.' I say to them: 'You really want
to die quickly?' If you want to see sunrise tomorrow
or sunset, you must have a reason, you must have the
stimuli to keep going.'
This story was first published on Jan 12, 2008.=