October 15, 2019--Life Expectancy

When a couple of years ago a neurologist told me that the tremor I was experiencing in my right hand was not an "essential tremor" but evidence of Parkinson's Disease, I asked him how long it would be before I turned into Michael J. Fox.

He asked how old I was. I told him and with a dismissive wave of his hand said I didn't need to worry. 

When I asked why, he said because at my age, before the symptoms became severe, I would be dead.

I told him that I then had something to look forward to. 

He asked what that was. 

I told him to being dead.

He didn't smile. In his business I suppose it isn't easy to have much of a sense of humor.

Thinking the other day about the intersecting curves of my slowly-developing PD symptoms and my age, in other words how I was doing on the dying scale, I thought to quantify it and so I looked up my actuarial life expectancy--how much longer I have to live.

For a white man my age it is 7.82 years. 

Not that bad, I thought, but then again, if I look back 7.82 years to 2011, as I did, it seems as if that was but yesterday.

Obama was in his second year as president--that was a good thing--and Osama bin Laden was killed--another good thing. Also, it was the year of the massive earthquake in Japan, the resulting tsunami, and the death of North Korean tyrant Kim Jung-Il. 

Domestically, in January, Gabby Giffords was shot, The King's Speech won the Academy Award for best picture, and the Packers defeated the Steelers in the Super Bowl. The Dow Jones average closing price was 11,958. Today it's 26,842.

Get what I mean? Doesn't it feel like just yesterday?

As you can see, I got carried away with this. 7.82 years. I couldn't get it out of my mind. It seemed like an OK number, but . . . King's Speech? Didn't we see that only two or three years ago?

I know life expectancy calculations are the heart and soul of how insurance companies operate. If they get it right, they make money. If not, their bottom line is effected. So traditionally considered, life expectancy is a big deal.

As I struggled with this, I wondered if this is the right way to think about life expectancy--not actuarily, calculating how much time is left, but to ask what I should expect from life. How am I doing in the living, not dying business.

Some days fine when the sunsets are especially vivid because I open myself to seeing them in their full display.

Or when dinner is particularly savory, again if I slow down and let myself experience the flavors and textures that way.

When I concentrate enough to hear the inner dynamics of a Beethoven string quartet. When I revisit some of Hemingway's stories and tune in again to his muscular prose. When the heat crackles in the pipes. When the birds, not anxiety wake me. 

When I notice how wonderful Rona looks in her red sweater. If I take the time to see even though I am colorblind and red often looks like dull gray to me. But in those moments when Rona fires my imagination and passion, red blazes and life is good.

If I manage to live this way, 7.82 years, or the time that remains for me, seems like just the right amount.