Children call him "Eternal Grandfather". I can't even imagine how old he is. We sometimes see him on the difficult path - from home to store. It's about half a kilometer, and it takes my grandfather half a day. This is his job and cannot be canceled. At the store, grandfather buys a bag of lollipops. On the way back, he catches every passing child and treats him. The grandfather has a dry back, trembling hands and steps are slow, slow. The grandfather is happy. “I'm not complaining about my health. So my head is clear. But I just don't remember how old I am. I forgot."
Local residents live for a long time. Even citizens addicted to alcohol. Dilapidated old women cheerfully crawl out to the beds every spring. Elderly grandfathers recklessly mow hay. From the back of some rural ladies over the age of 60, one can mistake them for girls: both the waist is noticeable and the gait is light.
maybe the search for eternal youth. "How many live here?" - this was the first question of a wealthy couple who came to our village in search of a house. “They live for ninety years,” the locals answered. As a result, the couple stayed, bought a house, made repairs and brought in new, more thoroughbred land than the local black soil.
This house is now called "golden" in the countryside, because as much has been invested in it as is enough for three cottages. Of course, the couple does not live there, occasionally comes to breathe the air of longevity.
But I have a suspicion that as a result of buying a house, the brigade of local men who made the house for them will have much more years of life. Because they were the ones who had physical labor in the fresh air in healthy male quantities.
I asked about local longevity from a local doctor who went from hospital work and high position in the regional health department to Ayurveda. “They are used to eating little and working hard,” the doctor told me. - They agree with their place in life. And they naturally follow the rhythms of nature!
I asked the same question to a philosopher friend who sometimes comes to our village from Voronezh. And his answer was related to rhythms too.
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And it's true. The village falls asleep at nine in the evening, and only in the windows of the "come in large numbers" of migrants, according to the city habit, the lights are on until late. Grandmothers begin to run about on business in the summer from six in the morning, in the winter - from eight. Every morning the villagers have an indispensable physical activity - some have a vegetable garden, some have cattle.
I know from myself: if you go out on a hill with a horse in the morning, then after this walk up the hill and back you feel different. And this is not about physical strength, this is about integrity and balance. Integrity allows you to do everything more efficiently. And efficiency unleashes strength.
We see this in any rural work. For example, rolls of hay are delivered to the entire village almost simultaneously. And the former city-dwellers - young and strong, are busy with laying hay late, and the elderly natives have long since put everything down and sit on benches with dominoes. It is clear that they have less physical strength, but they started at six in the morning, when, according to the doctrine of biorhythms, the body is vigorous and active, and by four in the evening they have already done everything - and now their body is resting in full harmony with nature.
Here, in the village, biorhythms become not an esoteric term, but a completely visual manifestation of our physiology.
I missed the morning cheerfulness - it is better not to burst across the decline in activity, but to do something leisurely, wait for the daytime cheerfulness and go to chop wood. If you don't wait, you'll rip your back. Everything is very simple. Everything is very clear.
The only pity is that this ability of old rural people to live in the same rhythm with the world is no longer passed on to their heirs. Those who left for the city live differently, get sick and come to their village relatives to cheat and complain. And, complaining, they manage to say: “Oh, aunt Mash, how hard you live: go for chickens, go for a cow, look after a vegetable garden. You are killing yourself!"
We, the former city ones, collect the knowledge that the local old people took from their elders, bit by bit, observing and comparing. And only after once again we are convinced that it works, we begin to follow the rural habits. I wonder if we'll ever get to our hundred years old