Why I'm pushing back on living to 100

The aspiration and marketing of a 100-year life is pissing me off.

I’m feeling [b]old the day after my 74th birthday. The current age-denying trend bugs me no end and I’m going to tell you why. I’m annoyed at being labeled a glass-half-empty pessimist—a Debbie Downer. Age IS a number, but it’s also a lived, unavoidable, and very individual reality. True, the experience and definition of old age are different for everyone, but despite what the longevity gurus are proclaiming…

• We can’t reliably defeat or “hack” the aging process

• Old age is not a disease to be cured (fact)

• There is no magic pill (yet), to ward off death

• And, finally, a final 4th quarter of life is not at all guaranteed

The idea that you can look forward to a 4Q roadway stretching to 100, shimmering in the distance when you turn 75… is indeed a mirage.

Because it’s bullshit.

I’m going to explain why and then I’m going to explore why I feel so strongly about pushing back on this. One reason is my ambivalence about feeling old age in my body and how hard that is to accept; another is the hubristic thinking, overconfident and arrogant, that suggests you are the special outlier who will get to 100 in robust health… just because you want to.

Here are the facts:

FACT: more than 95 percent of today’s 60 and 70-year-olds will NOT live to 100. Put another way, only three to six percent of men and women currently 65 or older, will reach 100; still, this is a very big, aging cohort. Numerous actuarial tables¹ support these statistics, and not just in the U.S. Read the NYTimes obituaries and you’ll see that many of these influential figures are dying in their 70s and 80s (or younger), one recent example being Diane Keaton at 79.

A lovely cake, but why is there a knife sticking through the numeral 1 candle? I think it’s signaling that getting to 100 might not be much fun. iStockPhoto

FACT: the 100-year life is a feel-good cultural meme. It’s aspirational, not based in fact or reality, and yet it has insinuated itself into our thinking about old age and longevity in the past 20 or so years, due to Silicon Valley immortalists², Blue Zones³, and mainstream media’s breathless headlines about the very rare 122-year-old⁴. When you turn 65, this thinking goes, you’ve got several dozen more vibrant years (your 4Q) to look forward to. That means more time for new possibilities, old pleasures, time with grandchildren (if you are lucky), and for reckoning with death. We all want these things! But it’s statistically unlikely, at least today, to count on these years.

Note: the remarkable demographic shift we’re seeing [from more young people to more old people] is not because people are living longer, per se, it’s that there are more people in their 60s and up than ever before.

FACT: our healthspan is not keeping up with our longer lifespans. As this NIH study puts it: “The societal triumph of longevity is plagued with debilitating morbidity⁵, accentuated towards the end of life.” In other words, countries around the world have added up to three decades of life since the mid-20th century, with men and women now living to an average age of mid-late 70s to early 80s. But for most of us, our final years, and especially our final decade, continue to be marred by the diseases of aging (physical and mental). A positive mindset is not enough.

I hope you’ll want to read on, whether you agree or disagree. A lot of work went into this essay! - Debbie