Are We Living Too Long?
The actuaries will not save us.
“You should call your mother.” It’s a phrase you expect to hear in college and maybe in the early years of raising a new family. But there came a point I thought if someone wanted to talk to me, they could call. Or email. Or text. Or even send a fax. The idea that as I approach the age of retirement I should have a responsibility to initiate a conversation with anyone who has been an adult for a half-century or more is, in my view, ridiculous.
Even so, as the holidays unfold, I get this sense of pressure to perform some annual Christian/Hallmark/Amazon Prime duty to make contact with people who don’t really know me or respect my values. But here I am leaving voice mail and sending emails across several days looking for signs of life. The reality is a 10% chance of a corpse at the bottom of the basement stairs, so at a minimum, I am curious.
Ah, the landline number! Picked up, so no wellness check by the local constabulary will be needed. The ramblings about Biden jacking up the cost of camping, Wikipedia being written by just anybody, and The Epoch Times being good journalism, have me thinking about the basement stairs again.
Hearing glad for the call and getting bored these days, raises a lot of questions. Why not call someone, anyone? Has everyone stopped picking up? She can talk the horns off a…
