If you double your age, will you still be alive? How about if you triple it

I’m 38. Twice that and I’ll be 76. That’s conceivable. My parents are around seventy and are still as full of life as I am! I’ve worked in care, and to my mind no-one is actually old until they’re eighty, or until they wilfully stop. My other measure of age? As a child it angered me when an adult couldn’t remember their own age. How could they care so little for their birthdays and identity! I swore it would never happen to me. I stick to that. If I ever have to pause to calculate my age? Then! Then I’ll be old.

Jesus only lived to 33, which was a young death back then. You’ll often hear ancient life expectancy was short, but it’s really skewed by infant mortality. 33 was barely scraping middle age. He died at 33, but he had a very good workaround, and lives for ever more.

Anne Frank died at 15. And yes, she pronounced her forename with two syllables.

Joan of Arc lived to 19, as did Tutankhamun

John Baptist lived to 30 or 31, Jesus to 33

Mozart to 35, and Princess Di died at 36

Amelia Earheart died at 41 and Steve Irwin at 44, Freddie Mercury 45, and all of these were horrible ends because they were ends at all, and all the worse for being untimely. Douglas Adams died at 49. This is his birthday: he would have turned 71 today.

It’s fun to be cognizant of your own mortality, and by ‘fun’ I mean ‘healthier than the alternative’. One day it will happen to me and to you, living life will slip away suddenly, as easily as falling off a log - or else we’ll be struck with the news or the realisation that our mortal end is soon, and that can be far worse news if it’s the first time you’ve ever really believed your life would end. Keep it a little in mind.

I don’t mind aging. Some people have a breakdown at 29 and again at 39, because they see a big number around the corner. People have the crisis internally and then finally dare to externalise it, and live the dream. I don’t think I’ll have a mid-life crisis next year — though to be honest if you could see my wardrobe and my lifestyle you might reasonably think I’ve been having a mid-life crisis for years, and enjoying it.

Twice my age is conceivable, but three times my age and I’ll be dead. I’m glad, and not in a bleak way. I don’t fear it, much. I’m thirty-eight, or two times nineteen. Interestingly, when I’m three times nineteen, or one-and-a-half times my age, I’ll be 57, and that’s a significant number. Why? Hitler!

Hitler died at 56. If you can live to 57 you have beaten Hitler, who for all his power and range couldn’t reach that

Patrick Swayze, Bogart, and the truly excellent journalist Nellie Bly all lived to be 57. They all beat Hitler. You can do it too, with a little patience. Yisrael Kristal, the longest-lived Holocaust survivor lived 113 years. He beat Hitler twice! A double Hitler, but only in longevity. In his lifetime he saw the Kaiser, made it through two wars, and then he became a confectioner, making fancy sweets - an excellent profession. He missed his Bar Mitzvah at the age of 13 because of World War 1, but had it a century later at his ultimate age of 113. For over a year he was the oldest living man.

You could live to 113 too, you know. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility. You probably won’t, though, and you should keep that in mind. Keep enjoying your birthdays until they run out, and count them, like rings of a tree. They’re worth something.

Wisdom belongs to the aged, and understanding to the old - so says Job 12:12, though I know that’s a dodgy book to quote.

In Isaiah, ‘I will be your God throughout your lifetime — until your hair is white with age’. And Psalm 71: IEven when I am old and gray, God, do not abandon me. Then I will proclaim Your power to another generation, Your strength to all who are to come.

Dear listener, beat Hitler if you can. Growing old and not dying is not a *moral* victory, but it’s a thing to rejoice in. Keep having birthdays until you die, and then some.