“If you could go back 10 years in time, be 10 years younger, how much of your wealth would you be willing to give up for that?” asked a friend at a recent gathering.

Some were willing to give up as much as 90 percent of what they had. “If I had those 10 years, I could make up that 90 percent and then more,” said a middle-aged businessman. He was willing to give up a lot to have 10 years of his younger self so that he could once again feel the energy and youthful spirit of his younger days.

There were others at the dinner who were adamant that they had no wish to be 10 years younger. They felt at ease with who they have become and would rather not go back 10 years to a time when they were struggling with their career and family. Now was good, they said.

As Koreans celebrated the New Year twice, on Jan. 1 and again on the Lunar New Year which falls a month or so later, getting older must have been on the minds of many: Having a bowl of tteokkuk, a rice cake soup traditionally eaten for breakfast for Lunar New Year, makes you a year older, it is said.

We now live in an age of centenarians. Statistics on life expectancy of Koreans released last year showed that men can expect to live 79 years on average. The average life expectancy of women is significantly longer at 85.5 years.

How we embrace getting older will significantly impact the quality of life. Some people put up a vigorous fight against the “ravages of time.” The stationary bikes at neighborhood gyms are taken up by elderly people who swear by exercise to keep the aches of aging at bay. In the locker room, women in their 50s and 60s gulp down various health tonics, exchanging the latest health information from TV shows.

At restaurants, women lunch and engage in feverish discussion about cosmetic surgeries that promise to erase the years. A shot here, a filler there, a little tightening here and a few zaps from a laser are a way to fight aging, the cosmetic surgery faithful claim.

All this may slow down the aging process, but no one can win against time. We try to fight time, but fighting it merely makes us more anxious, more afraid, and ultimately the process of battling it ages us. And who likes to be around grumpy old people constantly griping about their failing health?

Accepting that as we get older, our bodies and our minds will eventually give in to time might be a more practical and wiser way of aging. Aging with grace, rather than spitefully hanging on to vanishing youth, should be given priority.

Acceptance of aging does not mean letting go of everything. It means doing away with the unimportant things in life and carefully tending to those that matter. By the time we hit middle age, we know what is important and what is not. However, it takes a courage of sorts to abandon the unimportant stuff, a certainty that one develops with age.

Kim Chung-woon, a cultural psychologist and a best-selling author, extolls the virtue of studying as a way to be happy into old age. Studying is ultimately the only pleasure that will sustain us as we live to 100, he said in a recent interview.

If you don’t already know what really excites you, eke out some time for solitude and really think about it. More than all the health tonics, exercises, and cosmetics, this active engagement of the mind is the ticket to graceful aging.

By Kim Hoo-ran

Kim Hoo-ran is the lifestyle desk editor of The Korea Herald. She can be reached at khooran@heraldcorp.com. -- Ed.