Facing old age and death: a study in contrasts

Two relatives of mine provide sharply different models for facing the ultimate test of our character

Image from pxhere.com.

“We do not suddenly fall on death, but advance towards it by slight degrees; we die every day.” (Seneca, Letter 24.19)

Aging and death have been on my mind more than usual, of late. Not because I’m particularly old, yet. Nor because I’m facing imminent demise, that I know of. Rather, I’ve been interacting on and off with two relatives, let’s call them Eda and Oddo (not their real names!). They have given me much to reflect on because they are both older than I am (and about the same age, Eda being a little older) and one of them, Oddo, is now facing a terminal illness. The way they have been reacting to the onset of old age and, in the case of Oddo, imminent death, is a study in very sharp contrasts that has given me much to think about.

Before I go on, of course, a major caveat: this isn’t a systematic study of ageing and death. Those are available in the scientific literature (see, for instance, here, here, and here), and they have much to teach us. Eda and Oddo, by contrast, represent unique cases, as they differ in genetics, gender, nationality, upbringing, personal histories, and who knows how many other factors. So what I’m proposing in the following is by no means scientifically grounded. It’s just a series of personal reflections that you may or may not find useful. That said, I will indulge in some mild speculation about why Eda and Oddo are approaching the coda of their lives so differently, but that’s all you’ll get: speculations.

Both Eda and Oddo have lost their life partners in the past few years, but they have been responding to that loss very differently. While both, of course, have been affected by grief, Eda strikes me as having accepted and incorporated the loss in her general view of how things are. By contrast, Oddo has never really gotten over his loss, and has in fact gradually spiraled into depression, which he refuses to medicate, in part because he wants to feel the loss.

Eda’s attitude toward life in general is positive. She has a busy social calendar, regularly sees a number of friends and relatives, and gets involved in meaningful activities, such as volunteering for this or that group devoted to socially useful causes. Oddo, by contrast, essentially has no friends and rarely sees his relatives, not through lack of interest or attempts on their part, but because he “doesn’t see the point.” He has never in his life been a part of socially oriented organizations, nor has he ever engaged in any other-regarding activities.

The two are also very different in terms of their philosophical outlook. Eda is a religious believer, identifying with a particular Christian denomination. As a consequence, of course, she has specific ideas about meaning in life, the existence and nature of an afterlife, and so forth. Oddo has never been a religious person, though—if pushed—he would probably say that he believes in God. I don’t think he has an opinion on what makes life meaningful, and he seems to simply have adopted societal defaults: if one is married, with kids, has a successful career, and makes more than enough money then one is “happy.” Concerning the afterlife, again I believe he has just absorbed a basic set of ideas from his cultural milieu: yeah, there is an afterlife, and it consists of a good place and a bad place, whatever that may actually mean.

When it comes to their attitude toward death, Eda is not facing the issue directly, but I’m guessing that she will approach it as serenely as her faith will allow her, confident of the moral and material support of her friends and close relatives. Oddo, however, has recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness. He has, according to doctors, months to live. This has not really changed his fundamental attitude toward things, except that he now seems to panic and constantly indulge in regrets.

I found one manifestation of such panic to be particularly illuminating, and sad. Oddo has increasingly suffered from lodomania, or problem gambling. He constantly craves buying lottery tickets and has wasted a significant amount of money on them over the past several years, to the increasing distress of some of his close relatives. He has been repeatedly confronted about this, and he has finally concocted what to him sounds like a reasonable excuse: he wants to win millions to leave to his loved ones so that they will think well of him when he’s gone. This is a striking example of rationalization of one’s own addiction, of course, but it also reflects the fear that the people he loves do not, in turn, love him. Which, I can guarantee you, is simply not the case.

It would be tempting to point to one obvious difference between these two people: one is truly religious, the other one only nominally so. It is Eda’s faith that informs her worldview, the quality of her relationships, the nature of her actions, and consequently how she handles old age and eventually the prospect of death. Contrariwise, it is Oddo’s lack of actual (as opposed to perfunctory) religiosity that does exactly the opposite for him, on all of the above counts.

I think this is true, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go nearly far enough. For one thing, faith is not the same thing as religiosity. Faith has a very specific content, depending on the particular religion and denomination one is affiliated to. Consider, for instance, the Eucharist within the Christian religion. For Catholics, the bread literally is the body of Christ. For Protestants, it symbolizes that body. Catholics believe in the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary to Heaven. Protestants don’t. And so forth.

Nevertheless, a Catholic can be just as religious as a Protestant, meaning that they are committed to their religion, to the worldview that defines it. And they may try just as devotedly to live by that worldview. So I think a major difference between Eda and Oddo is not that the first one has certain specific beliefs that the latter lacks, but that Eda is truly religious and Oddo is not.

Even that, though, it’s not enough. In How to Live a Good Life I argued that religions are a subset of philosophies of life. There are broad structural similarities between religions and philosophies, which suggest that we should think of the two as more akin to each other than one may at first infer.

Specifically, pretty much all religions and philosophies of life come with three fundamental elements: a metaphysics, that is, an account of how the world hangs together, so to speak; an ethics, meaning an account of how we should act in the world; and a set of practices, to help us act appropriately.

For instance, compare Christianity and Stoicism (not an exhaustive list!):

Given the above, and my personal observations about Eda and Oddo, I’m going to speculate that the main factor that led to such sharply contrasting ways to live their old age and to prepare for the ultimate test of character is the fact that Eda has a philosophy of life (her religion) and Oddo doesn’t (despite nominally believing in God).

Of course there are additional factors that also played a significant role, such as Eda’s involvement with (and Oddo’s corresponding dearth of) friends and family, as well as the sort of socially-oriented meaningful activities in which she engages (and that Oddo has always stayed away from). But those factors too are connected to one’s general outlook on life, and therefore to one’s philosophy of life.

It could reasonably be argued that there are even more fundamental differences between my two relatives, differences that can be traced to their genetic makeup, their early upbringing, family environment, society, and so forth. That is certainly the case. But we are talking about individuals who are now in the 8th or 9th decade of their lives. These are mature, experienced human beings, and maturity and experience provide us nothing if not increased degrees of agency. Which is a fancy way to say that both Eda and Oddo are at least partially responsible for their own choices, and therefore for their current predicament, regardless or in spite of the facticities—as existential philosophers would call them—of their early life. If we don’t believe in that then we don’t believe in the human ability for self-improvement.

People arrive at their philosophy of life in a number of ways. Most of us simply inherit one from our parents and immediate cultural milieu. That is particularly the case if your philosophy is of a religious type. Some people change their life philosophy later on, as a result of a traumatic event that made them question the one they inherited, or because they are a reflective kind of individual and at least occasionally engage in questioning themselves and the wisdom they received from others. In some instances people just absorb bits and pieces of their life’s philosophy from the environment in which they find themselves and the individuals they interact with, despite having received no explicit teachings or having ever engaged in conscious reflection.

Most philosophies of life are at least adequate for the job, since they have typically been around for a long time and have been tested over the course of countless lifetimes. I don’t think it matters that much whether one is a Stoic, a Buddhist, a Christian, or whatever. The ethics of many philosophies and religions are remarkably similar, as much as their respective metaphysics may differ sharply.

There are, however, some philosophies that are not conducive to human flourishing, either individually or at the societal level (or both). Obvious examples include fascism and, in my opinion, Randian Objectivism, as well as pretty much any kind of religious fundamentalism.

All of the above considerations notwithstanding, the examples of Eda and Oddo have struck very close to home and have showed me how different the quality of life, and even the quality of death, can be depending on whether one is reflective and engages with others or allows instead life’s vicissitudes to throw them here and there as an empty vessel. As Seneca puts it:

“‘He lived for eighty years.’ No, he merely was for eighty years, unless you say ‘he lived’ in the same way we say that trees live. ... I wouldn’t refuse the addition of more years. But if my span of life is cut short, I will say that I lacked nothing that would render that life happy. I did not prepare for that far-off day that my greedy hopes had promised would be my last, but rather I regarded every day as though it were my last. ... Life span stands outside our control. It’s not in my power how long I will exist, but rather how long I will truly exist.” (Letter 93)