Aside from rushing around to ready ourselves for the festivities, this time of time of year gives most of us pause. It’s a time for good cheer, but also for assessing our lives.
Most of us in the West assume that if we’re lucky enough to exceed our threescore and ten – the Biblical estimate of our lifespan — we do so at the expense of our bodies. We’ve come to expect that the long path to our death is accompanied by an inevitable decline in our physical health. And, of all the things we fear, perhaps the most terrifying is the prospect of decay. We live with the certainty that we will grow progressively more feeble, forgetful and immobile.
The latest evidence would suggest that this perception of old age has largely resulted from the interfering hands of modern medicine.




