It was the great bard Pete Townshend who announced “I hope I die before I get old”. I am sure that he is every bit as glad as his millions of fans that he didn’t die before he got old, but then these days 71 probably isn’t that old at all. I have seen many people who are a lot older than 71 and I concluded long ago that Townshend was right.
Visit a care home, as I did for many years, to see close relatives and it can be heartbreaking. Scores of people alive, but not living, well fed but unable to feed themselves, seeing every new day but never knowing why. None of us want to end up like that, do we?
Not everyone does end up like that, thank goodness. Many people simply get old, infirm and with one regular visitor, the television. Their quality of life is life itself, if you regard that as life at all. Every home renovation show, every antique tat show, every third rate game show: this is your life.
If I don’t die relatively young, these people will in all likelihood one day be me. I cannot imagine a world where I won’t be able to play golf, however badly, or to write for hours on end, to go on holiday or even to read a book, but this is the fate that awaits so many of us. And the ones who are lucky enough to sit in relative good health, slumped in the armchair, listening to the every word of Jeremy Kyle, unable to cook or even use the toilet without assistance – well, we are the lucky ones.
If I reach old age and infirmity, perhaps I will be grateful just to be alive. As long as I have people who come to see me and shower me with love – and there are enough people who have no one who comes to see them – a life of sleep and watching TV might be enough.
The conclusion of this brief essay is entirely predictable: life is too short to spend chasing the material world. It is better to have some money than none at all – of course it is – but when time is not infinite, it’s time to remember that by the time you retire from full time work you are already well into life’s long decline.
More friends and acquaintances have retired or, like me, semi-retired in recent times, having given up enough of the one life they will get to their employer or earning a crust through self-employment.
There is no guarantee to any of us that bad days are not right around the corner. Someone I know well reached age 65, retired immediately and within days suffered a life altering stroke. A man who probably looked after himself a lot better than I do, who went to the gym on a near daily basis, ate and drank well – his life is in ruins. He was just unlucky, it seems, having an underlying condition that no one ever found.
Hope I die before I get old? I don’t know yet. Maybe, maybe not. I don’t suppose I shall have any choice in the matter but if I did I’d be a 100 year old golfer, writing blogs and books, drinking like a fish and living off cheese and chips. But it’s not going to happen, is it?
