Longevity

 

LONGEVITY

December 9, 2019 (Monday) 

I have never wanted to live long. Longevity has not been a goal of mine, even during my most contented moments. I simply do not view life in that way. If I was given a finite time that I am aware of, I do not think I would be overcome with grief. For instance, if I had only three months more to live, I feel I could accept it. I do not think of life as a series of milestones to cross. I get a sense of completeness in small things such as when my diary is up to date. It allows me to treat a new day as new. There is often much to look forward to, but it never impinges on what has already been. Death, noted W H Auden, is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic. A warning, but not a menace.

In ancient Rome, when a victorious general paraded through the streets, legend has it that he was sometimes trailed by a servant whose job it was to repeat to him, “Memento mori”: Remember you will die. A reminder of mortality would help the hero keep things in perspective, instill some humility¹. 

I do fear the process of dying though and would be desirous of having a painless death if possible. I was talking to my dad earlier and he echoed my thoughts. He has no qualms about dying and told me he is ready to ‘catch his flight’ above, as soon as there is a vacancy. I do not know if this type of thinking is peculiar to my family or more common generally. I do flinch sometimes when I come across ads that say ‘this will improve your chances of living longer’ because while living healthily is a definite goal of mine, living longer is not. The way I see it, my job is to do my job while I am in my job.

When my dad put some potato crisps on his plate today, I told him he needs to avoid salt (since his bypass surgery two years ago). He asked me if it was worth living up to 90 by depriving himself of simple pleasures or up to 75 doing what he enjoys? It was a fair point.

If longevity is unattractive to me, immortality would be unthinkable. It is however enshrined in the Hindu scriptures and my views go against the accepted wisdom of Hinduism (not for the first time!). For example, consider this passage from Shashi Tharoor’s ‘Why I am a Hindu’ which he uses to highlight that caste discrimination is incompatible with dharma:

There is a marvellous story of Utanga, a childhood friend of Lord Krishna, who had received a boon from Krishna that the Lord would provide him water whenever he needed it on his wanderings. On one occasion, overcome by thirst in a remote place, Utanga called upon his boon. An outcaste hunter soon appeared before him, clad in skins and dirty rags, offering him water from an animal-skin water bag. Utanga, a fastidious Brahmin, turned down his offer. The hunter continued his attempts to persuade him to drink the water but Utanga was haughtily unmoved, berating Lord Krishna in his mind for not having fulfilled his promise. The hunter, his generosity spurned even by a man in need, duly disappeared. Soon Krishna himself materialized before Utanga, informing him that he had sent Indra, the king of the Devas, in the guise of the hunter, to offer him not just water but amrit, the nectar of immortality. ‘Since, instead of accepting his generosity, you chose to judge him by external factors like caste, you have forfeited the chance of immortality,’ the Lord informed Utanga.

There is this tale from the Mahabharata which I would read in the book ‘Essence of the Upanishads: A Key to Indian Spirituality’ by Eknath Easwaran that drives home my point.

In the Mahabharata, one of India’s great epics, the five Pandava brothers go one by one to a lake for water. As each man bends to drink, he hears a voice: “Wait, my child. First answer my questions. Then you may drink.” But the men are parched with thirst. The first four who go, each ignore the voice, raise water to their lips and fall lifeless to the ground. Only the fifth, Yudhishtara, stops to grieve over his brothers and answers the questions. And in the end, the others are returned to life. Most of these questions would be familiar to any folklorist. But one of them has haunted me ever since I first heard it from my grandmother’s lips. “Of all things in life, what is the most amazing?” Yudhishtara answers: “That a man, seeing others die all around him, never thinks that he will die.”

Death with its promise of sweet oblivion is to be embraced when it arrives.

[1. From ‘Steve Jobs’ by Walter Isaacson]

[Author’s note: This passage from the book ‘Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius’ by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman would resonate with me, as would the story of Julian Barnes on what heaven would be like: 

“To the Stoics, all of life was a preparation for death. As Cicero had said, to philosophize is to learn how to die. Seneca, even at the height of his powers, was preparing for the close of life. So was Cato. So was Thrasea. So was Zeno. That’s how they were able to muster – in that terrifying or sad moment – courage and dignity, cleverness and compassion.”

Extract from the book ‘The Big Picture’ by Sean Carroll

Life Isn’t Forever.

Julian Barnes, in his novel A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, imagines a version of what heaven would be like. A man, who had been a working-class Englishman, wakes up after his death in a new environment, where everything is wonderful. He can have anything he asks for, with one implicit catch: he has to have the imagination to ask for it. Being who he is, he has sex with countless attractive women, eats meal after amazing meal, meets up with famous celebrities and politicians, and becomes so good at playing golf that he scores a hole in one more often than not.

 

Inevitably, he begins to grow fidgety and bored. After inquiring a bit from one of heaven’s staff members, he discovers there is an option to simply end it all and die. And do people in heaven actually choose to die, he asks?

 

“Everyone takes the option,” the staffer answers, “sooner or later.” Humanity has always imagined ways that life might continue on after our bodily deaths. None of them holds up very well under close examination. What the stories fail to account for is that change, including death, isn’t an optional condition to be avoided; it’s an integral part of life itself. You don’t really want tto live forever. Eternity is longer than you think.

 

Life ends, and that’s part of what makes it special. What exists is here, in front of us, what we can see and touch and affect. Our lives are not dress rehearsals in which we plan and are tested in anticipation of the real show to come. This is it, the only performance we’re going to get to give, and it is what we make of it.]