Two swallows raced past my window.  They circled each other in dizzying spirals before returning to their nest.  In the backyard, flowers courted bees, and two kittens tumbled together, blissful in their play.   Everywhere I looked there was new life: unbridled, robust and determined.
It was a beautiful Spring day when a close friend told me the hour of my death.
She had visited an Internet site (see below)  that makes a calculation on the average life expectancy. You type in your basic details and it gives you a date.  What morbid fascination had drawn her to the site eludes me still.   It also distressed me that her date for departure was a good 30 years after mine.  she had 30 years to party on in the wonderful world of the future.  The other unsettling aspect of the prediction was that I am destined to leave this Earth sometime mid-morning on December 25, 2036*.
I didn't want to abandon this ball of dust and spit.  I didn't want to accept the fact that there was an end to all this sorrow and frivolity.  There's just too much to look forward to.
our knowledge of ourselves has changed dramatically over the centuries.  Especially our concept of age.   Children are pubescent these days around the age of eight.  The teenage years of wonder, narcissism and sexual exploration can last well into the twenties.  While, if you're determined, you can now make your twenties last until your fifties.
In our times, people are less inclined to be responsible.  Our marriage and birth rates have declined as we tenaciously pursue fun.   We're living longer and enjoying life more (and if we're not enjoying life as much as we could be,  there's an awesome arsenal of antidepressants to cheer us up).   Who wants it to stop?  What other age has offered so much? How hellish would life have been before the invention of spectacles in 1303?  And when we could see clearly, what was there to look forward to?  The abolition of the poll tax (1381), radical advancements in pulleys, another bout of scurvy?
In 1777, Dr Samuel Johnson said, "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life."  Yet it was proven by the Burton Society in 1857 that you could be tired of London in just under three weeks, less if you had no money.   thus we arrive at the Victorian age, and now what is there to entice us?  The last instalment of "Bleak House "?  Seeing an ankle before you die? Inventing a new and fascinating way of eating a potato?
Until the beginning of the 20th Century, life idled along from one generation to the next.  Apart from the hem of women's skirts and facial hair on men, nothing much changed from one lifetime to another.  In days gone by it must have been a pleasure to get your marching orders to the next world.  Even in the technologically advanced West, going to the toilet has become an enjoyable experience only in the past 50 years.
Over the centuries these discoveries have been fascinating but, compared to the rate of change over the past 100 years, they're nothing.  Every day there are more questions.  What will happen in the fields of biotechnology, genetic engineering and virology?  What will "Voyager" discover beyond our solar system?  will we ever achieve a united peace for all peoples of all countries based on egalitarian systems of government, economic reform and decent TV?
But these are the mere tip of the ideological iceberg.  What about the eternal questions?  Will Macaulay Culkin ever make a comeback?  Will there be a Notting Hill 2?  Will someone assassinate Jerry Springer?
This is the worst age to be alive; give us the physical pain of the past, not the mental anguish of never knowing the answers.  The future is here, now, tumbling around us constantly.  We can no longer stop it than we could stop the sun from rising.  No other age can compare to the trauma it inflicts on the human heart.  imagine what wonders await us in the next ten years, the next 50, the next 100.   Imagine never knowing what these are.  Each new discovery opens hundreds of doors to possibilities we've only ever dreamed of.  Almost daily, the mysteries of life are unravelling before us.  We're learning more, understanding more, and thus we'll miss out on more when we go to the great beyond.  Is it any wonder no-one wants to leave?   For me there is only one remaining question: what will happen after December 25, 2036?  I'd give the world to find out.

* The other unsettling aspect was being told I'd go belly up on Christmas Day.  That's going to make a hole in anyone's holiday.  To think, after a lifetime of moderate struggle, I will be remembered as the selfish old goat who ruined the family Christmas of 2036.
 
 

The Australian Magazine
November 6 - 7  1999
Paul McDermott