Another birthday just went rushing by. I am getting tired of birthdays, and time, and its relentless habit of moving on, one second after another, until the next birthday arrives. Einstein believed that time was an illusion. But I have no faith in relativity. Time seems all too absolute to me.
I have heard from some very senior citizens that age used to command respect, although their memories may be playing tricks. Old people get less respect nowadays than vintage cars or antique furniture, which at least may have monetary value. When did you last see an old person, however well-preserved, valued at tens of thousands of dollars in the Antiques Road Show?
There has been a flurry of interest lately in the age-old question of old age. How long can we live? How long should we live? There are dozens of books about life extension, extolling the extraordinary medical and social innovations that have raised life expectancy at birth from around forty in 1888 to around eighty now. The research seems to show that if we torture ourselves with diets and exercise regimes and take a truckload of anti-ageing medications and supplements, we will become “active seniors,” even if we would prefer to be inactive. We might all be able to live into our 90s or beyond. The longest-lived humans alive now are around 118 years of age. The most extreme optimists have predicted a future lifespan of 130 years. But that’s not enough, it seems.
Some therapists report that they are seeing a growing number of patients suffering from what they call longevity fixation syndrome - an all-consuming obsession with living longer. But is this really a good idea? Most people say that they want to live a long time, but not many want to be old, and 130 would be very old indeed. Unfortunately, you can’t have one without the other. Given that old age is not very pleasant, and probably never will be, it is interesting to speculate on the motives for this particular obsession. An enormous ego that cannot imagine itself disappearing? An exceptionally meaningful life? Or Hamlet’s fear of what comes after life? Or could it be that the legend of Methuselah still haunts us? He was reputed to have lived 969 years, to the despair of his local social security office.
My objection to the arbitrary limit is that a single lifetime is nowhere near enough to understand what’s going on – to achieve wisdom. You must exit with a head full of unanswered questions, which is very frustrating.
Most of our big social and practical problems need more than a lifetime to be solved, but it’s only human nature to take the short view. (Après moi). If we had to look ahead (say) two or three hundred years, we might think very differently. Politicians might raise their eyes from the four-year election cycle, for example, although I have an uneasy conviction that if they could live hundreds of years, in the absence of any term limits on Congress, they would spend every day of their long lives on campaign fundraising.
