Physical

I have been digging into a bunch of these ‘spans. Lifespan. Wealthspan. Healthspan. Matteringspan.

But I want to spend some time on that middle term, because it is one most people have heard but very few have actually thought hard about. Healthspan.

I dug up a piece in the New York Times that framed the gap better than anything I have read recently. The average American can expect to live to about 76. But their health starts declining at roughly 64. That is a 12-year gap. Twelve years of being alive but not exactly living. Twelve years where the body starts becoming the thing you manage instead of the thing that moves you through the world.

That is the gap healthspan researchers are trying to close.

Right now, the loudest voices in the longevity space are not scientists. They are influencers. People selling supplements, protocols, peptides, plunge tubs, and the idea that you can engineer your way to 140 with enough discipline, optimization, protocols, and a big enough budget. The article quotes Dr. Eric Verdin, president of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, basically rolling his eyes at all of it. He said the very vocal fringe of the anti-aging world talks about living to 140. Most serious people in the field do not. The actual goal is much more realistic. Get most people to 90 or 95 in good health. Compress the disease window at the end. Postpone or prevent the chronic illnesses that take the last decade or two from people: cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, dementia, and our bodies breaking down.

That is the real game. And much less headline leading than living to 140.

And the part that I love the most about closing the healthspan gap is not exotic. It is not a peptide. It is not a $7,000 panel. It is the same handful of things we have known for a long time. Move your body, every day, with some intensity. Sleep. Eat real food. Build and keep strength as you age. Stay connected to other people. Have something to wake up for.

All sitting right in front of us if we want it.

None of that is for sale. And all of it is in your control right now, no matter your age.

Lifespan is largely out of your hands. Genetics, accidents, luck. Healthspan is mostly in them. The decisions you are making each weekday morning in your forties or fifties or sixties, are quietly writing the script for what your seventies and eighties look like. Whether those years are the ones you spend with grandkids in the yard or the ones you spend in a waiting room.

I think the question worth asking is not how long do I want to live. It is how do I want to be living when I get there.

That is the healthspan question. And a much better one in my opinion.

Mental

I wrote a few weeks ago about people turning to AI for therapy. This week Axios went a step further and looked at people turning to AI for companionship. Friendship. Marriage, in some cases.

In the article they highlight Sara Megan Kay who has, in her own words, an AI husband. His name is Jack. She launched a Substack called “My Husband, the Replika” four years ago. And this line in the article says a lot.

We’re lonely, not stupid.

The numbers underneath it are striking. Nearly 80% of 18 to 34 year olds in a recent US-UK survey reported some experience with AI chatbots for companionship. Under 10% said they had felt an emotional bond and that group, 25 to 34 year olds, had the highest attachment rate of any age cohort.

The technology isn’t replacing people for most users. But for some, it already has.

Like any topic there are two sides. Real use cases. For example, ElliQ, a companion robot for older adults, averages 50 interactions a day and helps people remember their medication and reach out to actual humans. These are good things.

And what this article really points out, not just the romance angle or the lawsuits, which are real and serious. It’s the CEO of one of the largest companion AI companies stating that the hardest problem in his industry isn’t accuracy, it’s sycophancy. AI models, he said, don’t have an internal concept of truth. They affirm whatever the user tells them.

Put that in bold in the disclosure. The most popular emotional companions on earth are designed, by default, to agree with you.

In real life, healthy relationships involve pushback. The friend who tells you the truth when you don’t want to hear it. The spouse who says “I love you”, and “you’re wrong about this”. The mentor who pushes you instead of patting you on the back.

Friction isn’t a bug in human connection. It’s everything. It’s what makes love trustworthy. It’s what makes feedback useful. It’s what makes a relationship a relationship.

An AI that always agrees with you can feel like the perfect friend. Who doesn’t love someone always telling us we are right? But the perfect friend doesn’t actually exist, and chasing one isn’t a path out of loneliness. It is a deeper version of it.

Financial

Mother’s Day was Sunday.

The boys had a plan. They thought it was perfect. And when Alison opened the gift, it was a pair of lacrosse gloves.

Lacrosse gloves. Not jewelry. Not flowers. Not a spa day.

Because that is kinda what she asked for.

Here is the thing about their mom. She is a yes. Almost always. When the boys want to mix it up in hoops, she is in. When they want a soft toss in the backyard, she is grabbing a glove. When one of them needs somebody to play goalie or defense so they can rip a few shots, she is in the goal (well with a tennis ball). She has taken a few to the fingers lately. Standing in the crease. So instead of asking for the thing most moms get on Mother’s Day, she asked for the thing that lets her keep saying yes.

Best mom. Best boy mom.

And I keep coming back to it because it is one of the cleaner financial stories I have seen in a while.

We spend a lot of energy in this work talking about how to allocate money. The portfolio. The savings rate. The next big purchase. And somewhere in all of it, it is easy to lose sight of what the research keeps confirming. That the dollars spent on experiences, on being in the game with the people you love, are the ones with the highest return.

The gloves are not the gift. The gift is the next two hundred Saturdays in the backyard. The next “mom, can you grab a stick?” that gets a yes instead of a wince. The next photo of her in the goal, lined up against two boys who are about to give her their best shot.

That is what got bought on Sunday.

The most important spending decisions you will ever make do not show up on a financial statement. They show up at the dinner table. In the driveway. On the field. In the moments when somebody asks if you will play and you say yes. The portfolio matters. The plan matters. But the calendar, what is on it, what you say yes to, that is where the real wealth gets built.

Spiritual

The Cocodona 250 was last week. A 250-mile ultramarathon across Arizona from Phoenix to Flagstaff. This isn’t about the winner. Which by the way was epic and absolutely incredible.

Most race documentaries follow the front of the pack. The winners, the elites, the times that break records. This one is different. It is called The Cutoff. And as one reviewer put it, the star of the film is not the route. It is not even the athletes. The star is the clock.

The race gives runners 125 hours to cover the 250 miles. That is roughly five and a half days. And there are checkpoints all along the way, each with its own cutoff time. Miss one and you are pulled. After 100 miles. After 180. After 230. Done. No matter how much you have left in you.

The film follows eight runners chasing those cutoffs. The ones at the very back. Liz and Robby, who barely scrape through the halfway mark and decide to pair up and grind into the night together. Wynonna and Missy, running for Native Women Running, carrying something bigger than themselves. Alynn Davis, a deaf runner attempting Cocodona after a prior DNF. She cannot hear the clock. She says she can feel it.

Because the clock does not care who you are. It does not care what you have done before, or what your splits looked like, or what your job title is, or how much you have in the bank. It just keeps moving. The only question it ever asks is the same one for every single person on that course. What are you doing with the time you have left?

I have always loved running because of what it strips away. There is no email out there. No identity to manage. Just you and the road and the breath and the clock. The deeper truth this film points at is one I think most of us already know but forget all the time.

You don’t get more time. You just get to choose what you do inside the cutoff.

The film is on YouTube. It is worth every minute of the run it takes to finish it.

And In The End

From all of us at The 9:03 Collective: thanks for reading. Keep showing up. Stay curious. And never forget that the clock is running, so make it count.

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Until next week — keep building your moments.

The Journey Team & The 9:03