The immortality illusion

     


     Youth can be a wonderful time. Unfortunately, it suffers from the illusion that life stretches before it into infinity. True, young people do encounter the aged. But the aged are perceived as some type of a different species which has experienced something that youth never will. Youth  finds it unimaginable to accept that they will resemble grandma or grandpa.  That it will no longer be able to do the things it so easily does now.  That joints will eventually loose their elasticity, reflexes slow down and memory begin to fail. Or that their mental faculties will gradually diminish and that Alzheimer’s might very well be their lot-especially if there are hereditary factors.

    All those considerations seem beyond youth to fathom. 


     I have often wondered whether the misconception can be dispelled by a systematic mathematical description of the time-periods involved. I think it’s worth a try. So let’s examine the actual numbers we are dealing with and see how they stack up against the illusion of infinite youth.

     The average lifespan in the USA is 75 years

     There are just 900 months in a 75-year-long lifespan.

     Each month has approx 30 days

     A 75 year lifetime has approx 27, 375 days.

     There are just 240 months from birth to twenty the leaves you with 660 months.

     and 240 more months from twenty to forty and official old age begins to loom threateningly close with its dreaded 50 after just 480 months of life, 240 of which were spent growing up.

     This realization generally shocks the person, and worry begins to grow stronger. Actually, the worry began as the person approached 30, but each decade the worry became more intense. That deep concern is opposed by the persistent sense that it really isn’t as bad as it might appear because we are special in some mysterious way.

     But let's continue:

     Each decade, has only 3,650 days, and there are just approx seven and a half of decades in a 75-year lifetime.


     But it gets worse due to the time-acceleration phenomenon. You see, as humans grow older, the perception of time speeds up. Five years will gradually come to feel like one. So not only is life short, but humans will experience it as going by faster and faster as they age. That’s why we see older people with glazed look on their faces asking what happened to their youth. It will seem as if one moment you were a teenager, and the next you are walking around arthritic with the aid of a cane.

    If indeed there were a way to make youth realize that the feeling of immortality is an illusion then their time might be taken advantage of in far more productive ways.  Unfortunately the illusion causes a squandering of precious years that can never be retrieved.