Geetting Old

When you're young, 10, 20, 30 death is an abstract. Even if you experience the death of a friend, relative, beloved pet, or even have a brush with the grim reaper yourself, death is not blowing its cold breath up your backside. But at seventy, my view of death change, I felt its cold, boney finger tap me on the back.

Its a fact of life, everything ages, even rocks, and all living things eventually die. Humans, however, do have a peculiar view on living, aging, and death. When you're young, death is the farthest thing from your mind; it's an alien concept, like turning fifty. As and intellectual exercise you know that some day, you'll die, death and taxes, right? Furthermore, if you play almost any modern computer game, you kill monsters, and bad guys by the hundreds. However, death in computer games isn't connected in a real way to the reality of life, as you experience it.

When I did think about my future life, it wasn't in terms of years, or decades. A long span of time would be, maybe, three to four years. When I was thirty, in 1967, the fact that a new century was due in thirty-three years never occurred to me, and I was a science fiction fan. I could contemplate the end of my life, but that event wasn't in the foreseeable future; I had plenty of time to do whatever  I wanted. By the time, I was forty or so, I had learned  that any new endeavor, usually took at least five years to complete.  Even so, I couldn't imaging running out of time. It never seemed to occur to me that the five-year  chunks would eventually end.

That's how I regarded my future life; that is, until my 70th birthday. Around that time, I felt like I had reached the  pinnacle of my life; the metaphorical mountain top. I could look down and see the end of life's path, still not in the immediate future, tomorrow or next month, but plainly visible. I could follow the path down the mountainside into the valley, valley of death? I didn't like that image. A depressing thought; one I had to deal with.

Even if I lived to a ripe age of ninety, the end was closer now than I wanted to think about. When I was sixty five, my future was still expanding, but at seventy, it had all at once become constricted. How should I think about this new reality? It couldn't simply be ignored. I could resign myself to the vision of an ever shorter future, and begin to count the days and years. Alternatively, I could accept the fact that I was now entering the last phase of my existence. Should I become afraid, should I have nightmares, what should I think?

Now, it's five years later, and I still don't have an answer. My path down the mountain side is shorter. I can still look into the future. But, before, I could comfortably feel that any new project I started, could take two or more years to complete, which wouldn't be a big chunk of my remaining life. That time line has foreshortened. Now, it seems, any new project, must be an extension of something I've already started. I'm reluctant to dive into any endeavor I may not have time to finish. Which doesn't make much sense, inasmuch as I could die tomorrow, or before I finish this sentence. To quote Donald Rumsfeld, when he was Defense Secretary.

Donald Rumsfeld:

"There are known known's; there are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know.”

Death is like that. You know its somewhere on life's horizon but not when. So, should I assign priorities to everything I do from this point on?  Or, continue living my life, and pay no attention to what I can clearly envision? Time does move in one direction; life has a beginning and an ending; I know that, but I don't necessarily have to like it.

Well ...... I just finished an on line longevity test and the results are TA TA..

Life Expectancy Results:

Life Expectancy: 90.31 years
Lower Quartile: 84.30 years (75% chance you will live longer than this)
Median Lifetime: 89.90 years (50% chance you will live longer than this)
Upper Quartile: 95.91 years (25% chance you will live longer than this)

So I think I'll just enjoy the rest of my life, and shoot for the Upper Quartile.