The rhythm of a good life
Living a good life isn't so much about success, it's more about processes ...
Gary Bloomer | SHAKING THE TREE # 274
I recently read an insightful article about the actor, director, and producer Clint Eastwood, who, at the age of 95, is still going strong.
He’s mentally sharp, he’s highly capable, and he’s still working.
Apparently, his secret lies in his diet, in his focus on meditation, an on his daily workouts with weights. By adding structure to his life it seems he’s outwitted aging.
It’s a tale that puts me in mind of my neighbour, whom I’ll call Arthur to protect his privacy
Arthur is 93 and bulletproof.
However, and unlike Clint Eastwood, Arthur hasn’t defined an era of cinema. He’s not famous, and he’s never made a movie, let alone been in one.
Instead though, and for forty years, he defined the precise schedule of the morning train into the city where he worked diligently for a major bank.
Although he’s never been mayor, for the last 27 years Arthur has been the Secretary of his local Bridge Club. While his great production isn’t in film, instead, he’s delighted in maintaining a well-kept home for three decades.
We often think about structure as if it were a steel frame in a skyscraper.
It isn’t.
But what Arthur—and I suspect Mr. Eastwood in his essence also understands about structure is something else entirely: structure is about setting and maintaining repetition in a few simple, nourishing steps that become, over decades, the texture of a life well lived.
Despite Arthur’s routine being anything but flashy, it is though the set of a series of social and mental loops that keeps him grounded and focused, which is more than can be said for many of today’s hot content creators.
Arthur wakes up at 6 every morning and reads for 30 minutes. Then he does a series of low impact exercises. Nothing too strenuous, but just enough to get the bllod flowing. After shaving, showering, and dressing, at 7:15 a.m. every morning on the dot, Arthur walks to his front window, rain or shine, to observe the street. He calls it “taking the morning’s measure.”
At 8 a.m., he eats two boiled eggs and one slice of wholewheat toast and drinks one cup of coffee. He takes his medication (he has an underlying cardiac condition), and then he sits down at his computer to scroll through the morning’s news headlines.
He’s done this every day since his wife died in 2005. His lunch is usually homemade vegetable soup from a recipe he knows by heart.
He can still bend to tie his shoes; he takes the stairs two at a time; he plays tennis twice a week; he attends a weekly social club, and two mornings each week he volunteers, at a local soup kitchen and dining room, and at the local humane shelters.
He dines in the evening at 6:30 on the dot. He enjoys an occasional glass of red wine. His meditation is an evening spent in his favourite chair, either listening to music, or reading, or listening to the radio. He is usually in bed by nine.
There are no raucous parties in Arthur’s life. No late-night drinking or overeating sessions. His drama is a sudden change in the weather; his triumph lies in a correctly completed crossword, something he does every day … in his head!
You see, we mistake vitality for noise, excitement, and volume.
We think a life well-lived must be loud, punctuated by grand events, and peppered with visible victories. But true longevity—that of body, of mind, and of spirit—is a quieter, more refined thing: part craft, part art. It is built not in the spectacular events of an imagined life, but in the easily repeated and in the sacristy of the ordinary, the mundane, and the everyday.
Arthur’s physical and mental health is not an achievement; it is a natural byproduct of his rhythm.
His system is not a regimen imposed, but a rhythm lived.
He doesn’t avoid processed foods; he simply eats what he has always prepared. He doesn’t manage stress; he finds it dissolved in the simple focus of a habitual task.
This is the lesson that the beginner content creator—the frantic person who must go viral and who must publish something every day, the person seeking a shortcut and a hack for life, must learn: The magic is not in the single act, but in the gentle, relentless turn of easily repeatable and time-tested actions and events.
A life of strength and peace doesn’t happen because you bought the most expensive plan, or because you have the latest gadget. It happens because you showed up for it, day in, day out, for years.
You added the small efforts and the quiet disciplines in their season.
You let patience, consistency, and time do their slow, alchemical work.
Arthur has out-structured nothing.
Instead, he has lived his life with intention.
He has tended to his personal domain—to his body, mind, and home—with a gentle, consistent hand. The chaos of excess, of frenzy, of reactive living, was never given space to take hold. As a result, these things don’t bother him because they are of no consequence to him.
So as much as we can admire the examples of Clint Eastwood, most of us will live out quiet lives and we need to be OK with that. We need to look past the glamour of the Hollywood example, and we need to reframe our future in the light of the things we can accomplish through quiet resolve, simple action, and easily duplicated steps.
Look to the Arthurs on your street.
The vitality you seek won’t be found in a new pill or a loud party. It is waiting for you in the simple, repeatable step. In the boiled egg. In the morning glance out the window. In the quiet maintenance of your own private world, day after day after day.
That is how you build a life that lasts. Not with fanfare, but with simple, repeatable fidelity.
As always, thanks for reading.
—Gary
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Next time on Shaking the Tree: Why a logo means nothing
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Originally from the U.K., Gary Bloomer is a writer, branding advocate, marketing specialist, and an award-winning graphic designer.
His design work has been included in Creative Review (one of the UK’s largest design magazines). Since 2009, he has answered over 5,000 marketing and business questions in the Know-How Exchange of MarketingProfs.com, placing him among the top 3% of contributors. He lives in Wilmington, Delaware, USA.