As I approach my 104th birthday, I’m often asked about the secret to longevity. My answer is there are no “secrets,” but living in alignment with a few timeless truths can help. I learned this as a 7-year-old in Brooklyn when my mother came home with steamship tickets to Tahiti and told us we were moving there.
“Where’s Tahiti?” my dad asked. “I don’t know,” she answered. “But we’re going in 16 days.” And we did.
Tahiti was lush and gorgeous; after bleak Depression-era Brooklyn, I felt as though I’d stepped into Technicolor. We lived on a lagoon and slept under a thatched grass roof.
Our family had to be flexible and practical to make a life in the South Seas. I learned French quickly, then Tahitian. Mother planned for us to live as fruitarians—she had been vice president of the Vegetarian Society of New York—but the sugar in all that fruit gave my brother and me boils. So Dad studied how our neighbors lived: fruit, vegetables, and fish. When we added fish to our diet, it fixed the boils, and I remain a pescatarian.
