(Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph)

A recent visit to Tyler by 100-year-old Orville Rogers has brought to mind many things.

Rogers was a topic of a Money magazine article this week featuring two centenarians. He is the father of local pediatrician Dr. Rick Rogers.

Both individuals are active and give thoughtful insights into how they arrived at their respective ages.

There are a growing number of people who are expected to live to be 100 and the projections increase for many decades to come.

The question you have to wonder about is if any of these folks actually “planned” to live to such wondrous ages? If you listen to their stories, you find they are typically soft spoken, full of wisdom and likely don’t take themselves too seriously.

Rogers repeated an old saw my aunt Carole’s husband Lloyd used into his 90s that he was doing pretty well when asked but that he wasn’t buying many green bananas.

Therein may lie the secret of life for all of us, planning too far ahead is pretty useless. At 54, I am reluctant to answer questions about much of anything in the future.

Occasionally people may ask what I think will happen in five or 10 years on a topic. Usually my reply these days is that I hardly know what I will be eating for dinner that evening much less what will happen in the next five days.

I suspect Mr. Rogers did not plan to reach his current age, but likely has enjoyed the journey that got him there nevertheless. His drive to win running races, set records in those races and serve as an inspiration to others has served a beautiful purpose to demonstrate what can be to us pups that are in our 50s, 70s or 90s.

For those of us in those age brackets, it is easy to view those who are say, 20-30 years younger than us vastly inexperienced in many of the ways of life. Can you imagine how someone more than 100 years of age must view those who lead our country and world?

You don’t hear a lot of 100-somethings talk a lot about politics. Many of them do talk a good bit about diet, exercise and even religion.

Perhaps they are onto something?