Training for Death
As we drove up, there was Dad, sixty-four years old, standing on the side of the road next to his navy blue Land Rover, pants around his ankles with yellowish, liquid shit streaming down his bare legs.
This wasn’t Michael, the handsome, charismatic, mercurial corporate real estate lawyer who bore a strong resemblance to Mick Jagger. Dad was known for his conquests at the negotiating table, epic parties, and tumultuous dating life. If there was a poster boy for the 80s, he was it.
That is why his standing half-naked on the side of the road was so tragic. He trembled in rage, screaming at anyone who tried to help, because he never needed anyone’s help, yet there he was, helpless. He was diagnosed with kidney cancer at age 54, told he had 6-months to live, and was kept alive by modern medicine for eleven years. This was his “marginal decade,” the years he was alive but couldn’t live the life he dreamed of.
Is this where we’re all headed? My mother, while an exceptional human, was no exception. My last memory of her was sitting in the hospital as her kidneys failed, itching her arms and legs until they bled. At first, she resisted medication that would have eased the itchiness because it made her drowsy. She wanted to be present with us. Then, it was too much. She was gone at 75 after a marginal decade battling breast and uterine cancer.
The modern death trifecta for me was my eighty-year-old stepfather, who died four months after my mother. After failing to answer my sister’s phone calls, her friend went by to check on him. When he didn’t open the door, she cajoled the police to climb through an open window where they found him unconscious on the bathroom floor. For years, he lived with congestive heart failure, type 2 diabetes, and kidney stones. After Mom died, he lost the will to try and fix his broken body and just faded away.
To state the obvious, I don’t want to go out like that. I thought my parents were the model I was supposed to follow, yet the last decade of their lives was fucking miserable. And they were not the exception. In 1970, the average American lived to be 70.8 years old (more for women, less for men, even less for minorities). By 2015, it rose to 79.4 before falling to 76.4 in 2021 (not of all was attributed to COVID). But here’s the thing, while we live longer, we can only expect to have one healthy birthday past the age of 65. So once you turn 50, you have 16 “healthy” years left and then you get a Non-Communicable Disease (NCD), treat it for a painful decade, and die a miserable death.
The only response is “What the fuck?” I thought we were supposed to be the jewel of evolution and the pinnacle of civilization?! Instead, the culture we live in ravages our bodies and minds and leaves us reeling in our last decade of life.
So what can you do?
Do what the one thing I know my parents never did. Plan your death. Not in some Kevorkian-like way or planning your end-of-life celebration, but picture yourself at the end of life, in your 80s, maybe even 90s. Define what you want to be able to do and determine the level of health and fitness that lifestyle will require. Then work backward and determine what you need to do now and along the way to achieve your 80/90 year old self. Is it foolproof, no. Could you get hit by a bus or get cancer at any moment, yes. But if you don’t plan your death, I guarantee you have almost zero chance of dying the way you want. So plan it, live it, and radically increase the probability you improve your death.
I want to die very quickly. Ideally, that means I am in my 90s, living the life of a healthy 70-year-old and I die of a heart attack (do not resuscitate order tattooed on my chest) doing something awesome, like a breathtaking hike, or BASE jumping. Or I get a terminal disease, don’t fight it, and get to enjoy all the drugs I’ve been too scared to try (see Alan Arkin’s character in Little Miss Sunshine). The goal is to minimize the number of days I’m not healthy and reduce the involvement of doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical, and insurance companies while maximizing the fun, healthy years of life.
To achieve my desired death, I have to live a certain way now. I for sure can’t eat like crap, sit on my ass, and stare at my screen all day. Said another way, I can’t blindly live the default American lifestyle, letting it steer me towards being overweight with type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and eventually getting cancer and dementia, while fruitlessly hoping pharmaceutical companies invent drugs that miraculously erase the damage American culture has wrought on my body for 50-plus years.
It all starts with purpose. Why do I even want to live to be a healthy 90-year-old anyway? Save the world? World domination? Love? Revenge? Mine, like many others, is family and loved ones. But that is too simplistic, not defined enough to plan around. What do I really want? I want to experience life with the people I love. I was very fortunate to travel the world in my 20s and 30s. While those experiences were amazing and formed my worldview, I always felt a sense of loneliness and desire to experience them with someone else. Recently, I’ve taken my sons on “Exposure Trips” to see the world and expand their minds. For me, it’s been everything I’ve dreamt of and I want more and more for a long time to come. That is what I’m living for.
The trick is to get specific. My big adventure will be a 5-Day trek in Bhutan when my boys are in their 30s and I’m 70. I will need the muscle strength and VO2max to hike a 14,000 mountain over 5 days. It’s not Everest or even Kilimanjaro, but it was hard enough when I did it in my 30s that I know I’ll have to work for it. When I’m in my 80s, I want to hike the most beautiful places in the world, which will require great balance. In my 90s, maybe I’ll downshift a little to walking the streets of Paris and Barcelona all day and dancing in the clubs all night.
To do those things at 70, 80, and 90, I will need a high level of fitness, strength, and balance. So now, I train to elevate my V02max, muscle mass, and strength as high as possible, so as they naturally decline with age, they will still be above what I will need to climb a 14,000 ft mountain at 70, manage a rocky path at 80, and the dance clubs of Barcelona at 90. Aiming to be as fit as someone two decades my younger is the goal.
I’m a weird dude with weird goals. Others may want to take their grandkids to Disney World by themselves and be able to walk around all day and do all the rides. Or win the 80 and over Pickleball tournament (you know who you are!). Your purpose is your purpose and your milestones, but what is true for everyone is it starts now to ensure you have the metabolic health, VO2max, muscle mass/strength, and balance to kick ass when you’re 90.
Google marginal decade, healthspan, and centenarian decathlon for more on this topic. Thank you Peter Attia for inspiring many of the ideas in this post. Read/listen to his book Outlive, which is required reading for anyone in and around 50 who wants to live and die well.
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