While others have reached the great age of 100, few can boast that they can still drive their own car, seldom need reading glasses and enjoy a full and active life.
When Master Pat Green from Ballinalee, Co Longford, retired from his teaching job 35 years ago, he felt that he had passed a milestone in his life.
On June 6th he passed another, celebrating his 100th birthday at his beautifully kept home, surrounded by trees just outside the north Longford village.
The "Master", as he is known locally, was the son of a local carpenter whose great grandfather had been a teacher in Clonbroney parish seven years before the Famine of 1847.
Pat has astonishing recall of events covering most of the century. For instance, his first memory was when he was three, hearing local men reading the Office for the Dead in English in his home.
This tradition, of local men reading the prayers during November, died out around the time of the first World War, he explained. "I must have been about three at the time but I remember it clearly and come to think of it, the first song I ever learned was Stabat Mater," he said.
His father, he said, was very religious, as was the local community, and some of his earliest memories are of serving Mass and church ceremonies.
He remembered clearly many young men heading off to join the British army to fight in the first World War and many of them did not return.
He said news of the 1916 Rising did not reach his village for a day or two after it happened and the leaders "were not at all popular" with the local people.
"The Troubles built up. The execution of the leaders of the Rising was when it started and then when Thomas Ashe died in prison where he had been placed following a speech he made here, the heat began," he said.
His father, he said, had witnessed the futility of the 1867 Fenian rebellion and was a pacifist and had discouraged him from joining the Volunteers.
By 1918 the young Green, who had been working as a school monitor, a sort of apprentice teacher, was in Dublin training to be a schoolteacher. One of his lecturers, John William Carolan, was shot dead by the Auxiliaries, when he opened his door to them. Dan Breen, the Tipperary republican, had been hiding in the house.
When he qualified, he found a series of part-time jobs. One of them was in Horseleap, Co Westmeath, where he was substitute teacher for Joe O'Boyle, the local teacher, who was interned in Ballykinlar camp.
While there, Pat was given good advice by Michael Collins's brother, who was married to a local girl from the town. He urged the young Green to acquire the Irish language.
"He told me that when the new state was set up all the teaching would be done through Irish and if I did not have it, I would not be able to teach," he said.
"I told him I had no money to go to the Gaeltacht so he gave me the name of a local farmer in west Cork where I could go and work on the land and also learn the language," he said.
He took the advice given him and was there as the Civil War progressed down the State. He was only a few miles from Beal na mBlath on the day Collins was killed.
"The country was so troubled at that time that I had to travel home to Longford by sea from West Cork. I got a boat from Cork to Dublin and then took the train down from Dublin to home," he said.
Peace brought stability into his life and he taught first in Lislea school, near Ballinalee, and later in Coole, Co Westmeath, from which he retired in 1965.
He had married in 1935 and he and his wife reared four sons and four daughters. His wife died only seven years ago when she was in her 90s.
The Master is convinced that the key to a long life lies in the mind as much as in the body and having a positive attitude. He confessed to having smoked an ounce of tobacco every day until he got a chest infection in 1973 and was hospitalised for a time in Longford.
"No one ever told me to stop smoking. I just was not interested in it after that and I never used the pipe again, " he said.
He was never a teetotaller either, he said, and to this day enjoys a few drinks in the evenings but would never drink during the day. "I think walking was important too. I would think nothing of walking seven or eight miles into Longford of an evening," he said.
He said that the greatest change he had witnessed in Irish society in his lifetime was the affluence which was now apparent everywhere.
"The increase in wealth has been a very positive thing for all but, on the downside, I have seen the farmers go from full self-sufficiency to a stage where they buy their cabbage and potatoes in the local shops," he said.
He said that the most negative thing he believes he has witnessed this century is the decline in moral behaviour, especially sexual behaviour.
"I believe that this will ultimately lead to a breakdown in society and it will create a lot of problems in the future," he said.
He reminded me when I was leaving that it had been 60 years since he had been interviewed by an Irish Times reporter. On that occasion, the interview had been on his folklore collection.
He wrote a series of articles for this newspaper on Irish folk tales in the 1940s and remembered that he had been paid £25 for his labours.
The Master has no idea how much more time the Lord will give him on this earth but he reckoned that while "I could not cut turf", he felt very well and would take each day with the next until called.