Tomorrow morning at about 5 am I’ll drive down to 24 Hour Fitness, set the treadmill to 30 minutes, the height to 15, the speed to 3.5, put on my Bose earbuds in front of a TV tuned to either CNN or MSNBC and listen to Mark Knopfler’s One Deep River, burning off a purported 250 calories or so before returning to the locker room, donning my faded Speedo swimsuit, and if all goes well, swimming 70 laps. It isn’t a walk in the park. Sometimes a struggle, sometimes boring, the treadmill and the pool aren’t always fun. It’s work. But afterwards, there is a reward.
I have a confession. I love being alive. Maybe I’ll love not being alive, too, but I’d prefer to delay finding that out for as long as possible. I think that what I do at 24 Hour Fitness may possibly help to keep that non-alive part far away.. But it isn’t just staying alive that’s the goal, it’s staying alive as healthfully as possible. According to the World Health Organization, the average American can expect just one healthy birthday after the age of sixty-five. I’ve had twelve. Looking forward to #13 in a couple of months, hoping to follow it with #14 next year. If healthy birthday is the goal, I have to overlook the tinnitus, the titanium hip, the broken ankle, stuff like that which didn’t compromise my health, really, just challenged me to accept the cliché “new normal.”
And therein lies the crux—longevity accompanied by good health. The shimmering value of being able to breathe, if compromised by debilitating issues, excessive aches and pains, dementia, and disabilities, loses its luster.
The New Yorker profiled a longevity expert, Peter Attia, who advises clients how to solve a uniquely modern problem: “the ‘marginal decade’ at the end of our lives, when medicine keeps us alive but our independence and capacities bleed away.” Beyond the predictable—work out, eat healthfully, sleep well, nurture relationships, Attia advises clients who pay upwards of 150k for full body MRIs, body-fat composition scans, DNA analyses, and advice he distributes to those who want to go the distance. I don’t take protein collagen powder in my tea, drink bone broth, add extra protein to my diet. I don’t follow Attia’s advice on living longer other than in following the big four mentioned above.
“By incessantly preparing for the future, skeptics say, we mistake a long life for a worthwhile one.” Dhruv Khullar, the New Yorker writer.
I buy that. Khullar closes with this from Attia: “Sometimes I think about all the people who’ve ever lived, and how lucky I am to be alive right now, like, if I died tomorrow, it would be O.K. But, while I’m here, I want to know that I gave it my all. We have this one shot. Wouldn’t it be a shame if we didn’t make the most of it?”
Why did I write this now? In the last three years I’ve been attending funerals, celebrations of life, not baby showers, weddings, or christenings. These end of life ceremonies aren’t for my parents or my parents’ generation. They’re for friends, people my own age or younger, people who are no longer in the fabric of my life, but they are people I have loved, worked with, whose presence in my life made a difference.
This morning I woke up, took a five mile hike through the East Bay hills, came home and had a wonderful breakfast of orange juice, blueberry pancakes, and bacon. For this and for so much more I am grateful. I was able to do this today, but four of my friends weren’t.
Then Joel,
Then Riley and Mary
Last Friday. My college friend Tom Zemsky is “getting his affairs in order.” A mutual friend sent me an email today. “He called me on the phone yesterday. The gist of his message was that he probably has less than a week to live. He was calling from a hospital room. From the hospital, he will probably go directly into Hospice care (although there seems to be some problem with the availability of beds at the local Hospice facilities). The doctors have him on very heavy duty pain medication, and he is resting fairly comfortably.”
And me? I finished my swim this morning in forty-two minutes and sixteen seconds, the fastest mile I’ve ever swum. I’ll cut the grass today, clean the house before the baby shower, pick up Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar at the library, play my guitar, watch a bit on CNN and MSNBC, grill burgers tonight, and at multiple times, give thanks for being alive, for having accomplished something this morning that is denied to my friends above—waking up.