{"id":79586,"date":"2018-06-13T08:22:21","date_gmt":"2018-06-13T15:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/getting-sick-in-a-healthy-way"},"modified":"2018-06-13T08:22:21","modified_gmt":"2018-06-13T15:22:21","slug":"getting-sick-in-a-healthy-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/getting-sick-in-a-healthy-way","title":{"rendered":"Getting sick in a healthy way"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

The idea of \u201chealthy ageing\u201d is a contradiction in terms.<\/p>\n

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Suppose you read the following sentence in an article about company management: \u201cThis factor is central in achieving successful bankruptcy.\u201d It sounds rather weird, doesn\u2019t it? What if you read this about football team training? \u201cContrary to popular belief, it is possible to lose a game in a successful way.\u201d These are so-called oxymorons\u2014by Oxford\u2019s definition, \u201cfigures of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The contradictory nature of the statements above is more than just apparent\u2014bankruptcy is the exact opposite of \u201csuccess\u201d for a company, and the same goes for losing a game for a football team. One can get very creative with <\/i>these: \u201ca blockbuster fiasco\u201d; \u201cthe fa\u00e7ade of the building deteriorated nicely\u201d; and so on. Examples closer to home would be \u201chealthy aging\u201d or \u201caging gracefully\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, semantics do matter<\/b><\/p>\n

The examples above are, admittedly, cherry-picked extreme cases. You can definitely say that a building\u2019s fa\u00e7ade has aged nicely; the intended meaning is that, while the fa\u00e7ade has indeed deteriorated with <\/i>time, the decay could be much worse than it is, and the original looks of the building can still be somewhat appreciated. Notwithstanding that, if the fa\u00e7ade of your house deteriorated, however graceful or disgraceful that was, you probably would\u2014and should\u2014consider renovating it before it started crumbling.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The idea of \u201chealthy ageing\u201d is a contradiction in terms. Suppose you read the following sentence in an article about company management: \u201cThis factor is central in achieving successful bankruptcy.\u201d It sounds rather weird, doesn\u2019t it? What if you read this about football team training? \u201cContrary to popular belief, it is possible to lose a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":418,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[269],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-extension"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/418"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}