CARLSBAD -- As beset as Americans are by stress, environmental risks and the consequences of bad lifestyle choices, statistical data tells us we're living longer than ever. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the average life expectancy for a person born in the United States is 77.9 years.

But there's more to life than its length -- and if our emeritus years are blighted by decrepitude and disease, longevity may become a curse. It's this realization that animates our search for ways to live full, vibrant lives as we age.

In this regard, Bernadine "Bernie" Hoff's life stands out as one worth emulating.

At 80 years old, the octogenarian educator, who lives in Carlsbad, said she recently celebrated her 40th birthday -- for the second time. She keeps a schedule many people half her age would find demanding.

"The positive attitude is so important," she said in a phone interview, "because it gives you the drive you need to do what you know you should do."

And what Hoff knows she should do is what she's done her whole life: teach. For three years she's taught a safe driving course for seniors. She's served on the Core Adjunct Faculty at National University since 1981 and taught troops at Camp Pendleton and Twenty-Nine Palms.

"The glass really is half full, not half empty," she said. "My parents taught me that."

One could say Hoff's glass is overflowing. In August of 1997, at the age of 71, she joined the Peace Corps and went to Morocco, where she was assigned to teach business English at the Ecole Nationale de Commerce et de Gestion, in Agadir.

"Morocco has a marvelous bus system and marvelous walking places, but it's hazardous," she recalled. "About every six months I would step in a hole and fall. But I have strong bones and nothing serious ever happened. I would get up in the morning, go to school, teach all day, then go into their computer room … and I would get ready for the next day's class."

In the four years she was there, she learned to live without things many Americans would call indispensable.

"I didn't have a telephone. I didn't have a refrigerator. I had a hot water heater, but it only worked for the shower."

But there were other compensations.

"Everything over there was done at a leisurely pace," Hoff said. "There was no time pressure. You pretty much did things when you wanted to, and if you didn't want to, well, you'd take a nap. Or go visit a friend."

In the late summer of 2001, with her Peace Corps obligations complete, Hoff returned to the U.S.

"I had to live by the American pace again," she said. "It's traffic jams and telephones going constantly -- you're always rushing to catch up."

Fortunately, she had the constitutional wherewithal to rise to the challenge. She plunged into the classroom, rooming with a friend who lived in Joshua Tree and teaching young Marines college-level English four days a week at Copper Mountain Community College.

That was five years ago, and she hasn't slowed down since.

"A lot of it is genetic," she said. "I'm blessed -- I don't have high blood pressure … I don't have high cholesterol. I don't have osteoporosis. I don't have arthritis. All of the things that slow people down, I don't have."

Reading this, some might be tempted to dismiss her story as an accident of good fortune -- of only limited significance for the majority of people who lack her genetic endowments. But Hoff's days are far from carefree. Having the right parents hasn't exempted her from toil and suffering. She struggles to make ends meet, and there are days when she would just as soon not have to teach a room full of students.

But she does it anyway.

"I plunge in. Get my mind on something else. I tend to not talk about my problems."

It is, she said, a tactic anyone can use.

"I do it with my driving (for instance) … I know that if I'm going to be a safe driver, I have to focus on the act of driving. … When I find my mind wandering when I'm driving, I say, 'Bernie -- focus.'"