Every birthday I share my thoughts on this page. While it's a pleasant surprise to be alive and having lived longer than most of my relatives, I can't help wondering why I've lasted so long, considering that long ago I was told that I wouldn't make it to 40. Later this figure was revised to 70, and as recently as seven years back, a doctor predicted that I wouldn't last more than a year (he said it because I'd questioned his diagnosis and he was offended). The poor chap himself died of Covid a couple of years later.
I've always been interested in why some closely related people die earlier than their more fortunate cousins. Someone asked me why people should yearn and pray to live long, since the last ten years of one's life are filled with health problems. I'm inclined to agree. I lived a relatively painless life until the age of 75, but every year after that it's been an ordeal getting up in the morning. Doctors usually prescribe pain killers, but I've refused to take that route. It was old age that caused me to drive into a barrier and damage my car two years back. After that, I rarely drove, but when I escaped another horrible accident, I gave up driving completely.
Of course, there are people I know who are older than I am, including two relatives (both brothers), but they have a younger brother (three years younger than me) who is not in good health. Then there is the neighbor who is 91, always smiling and still healthy. In the north of the country, some people live up to the age of a hundred, in fact there used to be a Muslim in the former Soviet Union (in an area close to north Pakistan) who reportedly died at the age of 165. Of course, there was no way of verifying his actual age, which is why I still don't believe it.
Just for the record, I don't want to live that long.
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