Today's Exactly100: The Viejos of Vilcabamba

A dusty, bargain-basement book I’d dug from my collection of books stashed away in my hometown examines some uncommon truths. The author is a lady reporter who had lived for a year with the viejos of Vilcabamba, an Ecuadorian village, to learn why the people there lived to a ripe old age.

Among other things, she discovered that – in contrast to our predilection for collecting stuff: things, souvenirs, knowledge, experience, husbands, lovers, all – the viejos lived on the impulse that “a man becomes all that he has given away.”

Bad news for all collectors of stuff like you and me. /mdm