When people wish others a “happy birthday”, one of the most common wishes include “may you live a long life”. It is usually in good spirit, and the idea behind the prayer is that you live longer so you can enjoy life. In the bliss of the moment, people forget that as mere mortals, we don’t get to live long in eternal youth. Most people don’t seem to realize that living longer involves aging, and along with it, suffering.
The physical realities of aging
Social media had numbed us to the very real physical issues associated with aging. It made us believe that we’ll become cute, happy grannies/gramps once we hit that ripe (or overripe?) age of 70, 80, heck even a 100.
They gloss over the harsh reality of dementia, shit-ton of comorbidities and the ever-beloved incontinence. Actually, incontinence is the least of your problems in old age, if you’re ever one of the few lucky bastards from a very blessed gene pool. For most people, heart and neuromuscular issues will eat them alive throughout old age, and in extension, in long life.
The Roman poet Juvenal, slaps us with the undesirable realities of old age. In his work Satires, especially in Satire 10, he analyzes the vanity of the human desire to “live long”. In this passage he describes the physical and mental changes that long life, and in extension aging, brings: the sagging skin, loss of sight, hearing and taste, and a lengthy list of ailments: rickety bones, toothless gums, aches and pains everywhere. All of these leading to the worst outcome of all: the loss of mental faculties.
Losing your essence
Memory is a powerful thing. Essentially, memory is the process of recalling stored information that you learned. It is used in problem-solving, in planning, reasoning, language-learning… the list goes on. It is arguably one of the vital human processes that can cripple our human experience if lost. Our memories make us who are.
So what good is living long if we lose our memories, our essence? What’s the point of living through the years only to be a shell, unable to enjoy your senses? You become no better than a rock, so why not just rejoin the earth and be a rock (meaning, die)? Eventually, with the loss of one’s self, death becomes not a dread, but a relief. Like a lifebuoy when you’re neck deep in the tempest of waters.
Ageism?
In spite of the obvious terrors of old age, there are some specks of gold in the experience. Wisdom, for one, is the most spoken positive attribute of aging. Your cumulative life experiences lend you increased insight compared to someone with less years. Society lauds the wisdom of the elderly as an important contribution, such that across cultures, the young are expected to listen and respect their elders unconditionally.
In fact, in certain aspects of our society, old age is seen as more favorable. Examples of these areas are in the government and some corporate spaces.
In the US senate alone, as of the 118th Congress, 2024-2025, 30% of its members are from the 70-79 years old age group. 5% come from the octogenarians (80+ years old). More specifically, the US president as of this writing, is 78 years old.
Many people still believe older individuals are wiser, so they are willing to relinquish control of their lives to those with potentially questionable mental abilities. While I’m not shaming the natural consequences of aging, the reality of aging is very present and shouldn’t be ignored. If we don’t trust an 80-year old to drive in the highway, why are we trusting them with our futures?
“You’re ageist! Discriminatory!” I can hear you say. Sure. But ageism is deeply ingrained in our society, heck, it’s even in the constitution. The US Constitution sets the minimum age required to run for Senate at 30, and to be president, 35. This was because of the belief that running a country requires experience (note the lack of the word “relevant”), but I digress.
Old age does not always mean more wisdom
In more practical settings, i.e. in the day-to-day, aging and wisdom are not mutually exclusive. Again, going back to the previous example of people in the US government, didn’t the 78-year old president just imposed tariffs on its economic allies, thinking it would benefit US economy? (No, it doesn’t.)
Politics aside, the abovementioned isn’t the only example of old age failing us. We lose a little bit of our decision-making abilities as we grow old. Case in point: how many elderly become victims of scammers simply because they failed to recognize a scam?
Losing yourself
The simple trouble of remembering what you ate yesterday for breakfast is a very real effect of aging. Soon enough it will be the name of that restaurant you liked, and eventually, even the name of your kids and your partner. Before long, it’s not just your memory that will fail you. Your body will forget how to wipe your own ass, and then, how to breathe.
And it may not be you, but it will be someone close to you. Family, friends, lovers. How many funerals are you willing to attend before you long for the end of a “long life”?
To conclude, allow me to leave you this, dear wonderer: before you wish for a long life, you may want to consider the ugly realities that come with it.
If you’d like to explore how I personally view death and what a peaceful ending means to me, I wrote about it here.