On Old Age to Come and Regret Anticipated
The only worthwhile regret is regret anticipated - the regret yet to happen, and which there is yet time to ward off through action. The past is a stone table, and regret for past inactions at the root of present circumstances serves no purpose other than education. Learn quickly and put those regrets to one side; look instead to the future and the regrets yet to come - let that guide your actions.
Look around you the next time you're out and about; the tapping cane of a bent old man who can no longer walk unaided; the nagging cough of the elderly woman possessed of an age-damaged immune system; the pained hesitance of an arthritic senior citizen organizing materials to write a check. Folk all around you struggle and suffer over matters to which you give little thought; worse, the ones you recognize will vanish, day by day and one by one. Aging keeps death busy.
Barring sufficiently rapid and radical progress in medical technology, the pain and frailty of the old form a mirror for your future regrets. Two decades hence, three decades, five, will you regret your inaction, your failure to materially support the advance of medicine at a time when your contributions would have made a great difference?
Regrets are best anticipated, and this is an easy regret to anticipate. Perhaps you didn't know that there are a number of very easy ways to help make the science of longevity move more rapidly. Perhaps you didn't know that gaining an additional 20 years of healthy life within the next 20 years is plausible, if levels of funding and support increase greatly. You know now.
You have a chance today, this year, to help tip the fulcrum to bring great change, speed and growth in longevity research and the fruits it will bear in decades ahead. To have a chance to gain many more healthy years of life. Don't blow it.
Technorati tags: activism, aging, life extension