As medicine, diet, lifestyles etc reconfigure the landscape of dying by enabling us to live longer / enjoy extra twilight years (not me, I smoke), our relationship with death is altering. When death cuts a life cruelly short it is held to be a Bad Thing; when it brings to a merciful close a too-long life it is held to be a Good Thing. And the balance is shifting in favour of the latter — viz the recent and growing assisted dying movement. Lives are still cut cruelly short, but fewer than ever before.
Stats produced by the International Longevity Centre UK, reported in the Sunday Times, may induce in some a sentiment which chimes with that of Leslie Sarony in his song, Ain’t It Grand To Be Blooming Well Dead.
More than a third of babies born today will live to a hundred, the report suggests. It’ll take them til they’re 52 to pay off their university debt and til they’re 61 to pay off their mortgage. Marriage will come later at age 33.
Retirement will not start until they are 70.
Pretty gloomy stuff Charles! That said, people’s lifestyles today would probably seem absurd to our predecessors a hundred years ago.
A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
Franz Kafka