In a talk I recently watched given at TED by Aubrey de Grey, he pointed out that to drastically extend human lifespan, we don’t need to figure out how to live to 1000 right now. All we need to do is figure out how to live 10 additional years, and then in the course of those 10 years, figure out how to extend the lifespan 10 years further, ad infinitum. Given the accelerating pace of our understanding of biology, this becomes an increasingly reasonable possibility.

Today I read that Sirtris Pharmaceuticals announced the preliminary results of a short-term human trial of a resveratol derivative (the compound found in red wine which is usually given credit for the drink’s life-lengthening effects). It apparently “significantly reduced blood sugar in 67 diabetic patients as compared with a placebo group.” Which brings up an interesting question. If it is an effective agent for the treatment of diabetes, it’s likely that insurance will cover it for that purpose. If it *also* functions as an anti-aging drug, how many people are going to suddenly develop diabetes?

(Also from TED, and highly recommended, are Dan Gilbert’s Stumbling Upon Happiness talk, and Barry Swartz’s Paradox of Choice talk.)

It’s been my experience that new years is vastly over-hyped. I’m fairly confident this is directly related to having a countdown to . . . nothing . . . absolutely nothing. Every year one hopes for some great epiphany, some declaration of love, something, anything, of meaning, and every year the clock just continues ticking on, taunting us with its twos and threes.

Fortunately, for so many of us, life is banal. We’re well-fed, housed, and clothed. Wars, where they do exist, are minor and lack purpose. Our continued existence is not in question. We enter each successive year not in celebration that we’ve “made it”, that we’ve survived this long, but simply as another mark on the calendar. Tomorrow will be the same as yesterday, which was the same as the day before it.

To compensate, many simply drink a lot - in alcohol there is purpose, in vino sententia. Others jump out of planes, wrestle an alligator, or take swims in piranha infested waters; all in an attempt to recapture a struggle for survival, to momentarily replace banality with adrenaline, to remember what it is to live.

I have a new years resolution, both for me and for you. In 2008, try to discover why we’re alive. Give our lives a purpose, any purpose that feels genuine, so that when 2009 rolls around we won’t wonder why nothing happened, but rather we’ll be grateful for the opportunity to keep what ever it is that happened, happening.