When a Spanish-speaking friend wants to wish you the best, he will often lift his glass with the following toast: “To health and wealth - and time to enjoy both.” In this toast there are three basic wishes that everyone has at some point in their lives. Why can’t we live longer? Everyone wants to live longer. Everyone wants to enjoy a life of purpose and fulfillment, without disease or unhappiness. As we grow older, we worry even more about increasing our lifespan, even if by just a little. We want to have time to still make plans, to enjoy what we’ve done in our lives, and whatever else life has to offer. By the time we reach 60, we realize that, in the words of the great French painter Gauguin, “life is a split second.” We begin to think about all the things we still want to do before the next ten years pass us by. If we are fortunate enough to get there, we wonder why we can’t live even longer-perhaps to be 80, or even to 100. Well, why can’t we? Actually, we indeed are living much longer than we did a century ago, increasing the average life expectancy by 20 years in America since 1900. How have we achieved this?