Living to 180? No thank you
Better to lead a fulfilled life with time’s winged chariot at your back than merely exist, says Libby Purves
ON a grey bitter morning, with the radio droning dire predictions, and a constant thrum of anxiety from businesses, theatres, orchestras, teachers and sad masked children, I read that Leo Belzile, a statistician at the Canadian business school, concludes from data analysis that the human lifespan will within this century be 130 to 180 years. Supercentenarians are increasing. Pampered westerners, who on average already beat the biblical threescore-and-ten by over a decade, may face an extra half-century.
Dear God, no! Enough is enough. When the Grim Reaper calls, I’m off, ideally with a song in my heart and a hatful of good memories and friendships. Make space for the next lot, however ungrateful they are. It would, of course, be nice to get a few more journeys in and reach the mideighties with functional knees, and I suppose a taste of the tenth decade is OK if it involves the energy and independence of David Attenborough or the Queen.
My dad, despite crippling arthritis, used to remonstrate with a friend from a euthanasia group. Brandishing his Times he would protest that he’d ‘‘always want to see what happened next’’.
I applaud this attitude, and later when the Berlin Wall fell (he had watched it going up) I nipped to the churchyard to tell him. But although he deserved another decade, I think he would have regarded 60 more years of burdensome doddering as indecorous and absurd. He was without religion but when friends died, would joke ‘‘It’s getting to be a pretty good party over there’’. A good response, even if it turns out there isn’t any ‘‘over there’’ at all: none of us knows for sure.
That too is fine by me. Whatever your expectation, there is something stimulating about our limited human tenure. Despite all the pity and horror of premature deaths in the pandemic, and the disgrace of care-home rules putting mere lifespan over kindness, I am always puzzled by cries of ‘‘My nan was only 94!’’
The idea of science bringing super-longevity makes me shudder. Geriatric medicine is good, but the Bible got it right: man that is born of woman blooms like a flower, fades and withers.
Even optimistic doctors flinch at the huge medical and social costs immense lifespans would bring: major interventions, replacement knees, hips, corneas, heart valves, pharmaceuticals. It would be, one medic observed ‘‘like keeping an old car running, but eventually it’ll die’’.
It is good to maintain the elderly reasonably and with love, and stave off avoidable threats. I am grateful that the National Health Service foiled a blood
It is good to maintain the elderly reasonably and with love, and stave off avoidable threats.
condition that planned to wipe me out, with biblical efficiency, just as I hit three-score and ten. But it wasn’t my sacred right, and any direct choice between that and saving someone far younger would be a no-brainer. I’d have been mortified to win that game.
Irecently reread John Wyndham’s Trouble with Lichen, a 1960s sci-fi novel in which an ‘‘antigerone’’ drug slows ageing and offers 200-year lifespans. It admits the political difficulties but offers a feminist slant, suggesting clever women in particular would benefit from getting procreation over with and avoiding their fate of dwindling into domestic wifehood. It appalled me even as a feminist teenager: the world has enough tired old buffers clinging to power and influence as it is, with a boomer generation ludicrously overloyal to itself and its idols. No wonder the young are annoyed. We’re in the way.
Anyway, knowing our life’s limit shakes us up, makes us keener for even small adventures, and reminds us to say the important things to important friends and relatives. No wonder some of the most dedicated rule-breakers you meet are elderly sports, defying their bossy children’s cottonwool rulings to relish the last drops of life. But 50 or 60 years more to face? I think not. Feeling time’s winged chariot at your back is healthy. There’s zest and gratitude in knowing nothing is forever.