The longer I live the more interest I have in life expectancy calculators. I played with them during my forties and fifties as a source of online amusement but, in my mid-sixties, this is serious business. Sure. These calculators produce only approximations, but they are based on statistical analyses. The actuarial analysts who create them are highly trained people who predict outcomes based on past history and math. They work for the government, banks and insurance companies. It is their “best guesses” that lead to the outcomes on the calculators. It’s kind of like predicting if your next blind date is holding a bouquet or a knife behind his back. You have a good idea based on experience.
I did an online search for the best life expectancy calculators. The companies that put out the top four are; Livingto100, Blue Zones Vitality Compass, Blueprint Income and Northwestern Mutual Insurance. The Social Security Administration also has a predictive calculator. Unfortunately, it only takes your age and gender into account. Most life expectancy calculators take ten or more variables into account. More variables taken into account lead to a more accurate prediction of your lifespan.
The basic questions besides age and gender are; height, weight, current health status, history of cancer, heart attack or stroke, family history of disease, number of medications taken, frequency of going to a doctor, exercise, diet, smoking, alcohol use, safe driving, marital status, number of close relationships, amount of stress, and amount and quality of sleep. The more invasive calculators ask questions about your tooth brushing, whether you wear sunscreen, and the regularity of your bowel movements. They do not ask about how often or whether you have sex or if you masturbate.
The grim results for me are as follows: the U.S. government says that, as a 64-year-old woman, I will live to be 86.5. Thanks, U.S. government, for giving me the least number of years of all the calculators. This is probably pretty accurate though since both of my parents died in their mid-eighties, one with a heart issue secondary to dementia drugs and one due to colon cancer. The Northwestern Mutual calculator predicts that I could live as long as 95 years. That’s great news, Northwestern Mutual! If I buy more life insurance, it will be from your company.
Eight and one-half years is a huge disparity in these figures. Northwestern Mutual took into account that I am a vegetarian, exercise regularly, get regular check-ups, brush my teeth, wear a seat belt, and don’t smoke. It did not take into account that I lied about never eating fast food and fudged on my alcohol use. They also did not ask about my asthma or high blood pressure or degenerative arthritis in my spine. It seemed kind of odd that they overlooked these obvious things. The arthritis will eventually cause my daily exercise to dwindle to a few vigorous walks to the refrigerator.
My life so far has consisted of 64.5 years or 774 months or 3,357 weeks or roughly 23,500 days. If I live to be 86.5 like the Social Security Administration says, I will have another 7,900 days of life. If I live to what the half-truths fed into the Northwestern Mutual website says, I would have 11,200 days left. The actual number is probably somewhere in between, perhaps around 27.5 years or 10,000 days. That’s a good round number: 10,000 days. That seems like a long time, but it really isn’t. I have already lived 23,500 days. That’s over double the number of days left. In short, I am over two-thirds into my entire lifespan. That is like coming into a game midway through the third quarter or walking into a movie at the climax and asking, “What did I miss?”
It occurs to me that I should get along with the things I have been putting off. You know, those important things like travel, learning a foreign language and eating cream puffs until I vomit. I should let those near and dear to me know how much I love them, not just hurriedly mumbling it at the end of each phone call. Gone are the days of timidity. There’s no time to be bothered with trivial concerns. Only the big things matter now. As Richard Carlson said in his books, “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff (and it’s all Small Stuff).”
I got to thinking about what I could do in my last 10,000 days. First, I had to take stock about what I have already done. Here is a partial list of things I did during my previous 23,500 days:
- Danced on a table in a crowded noisy nightclub
- Zip lined through the forest in Oregon
- Steered a small plane over the Amazon rain forest
- Helped repaint an orphanage in Morelia, Mexico
- Married a man only a month after meeting him
- Crashed a class reunion and convinced everyone that I was “Christine”
- Became a member of the Mile High Club
What’s left to do? Here’s a partial list:
- Put bags of flaming poop on the front porches of my worst former neighbors
- Learn how to curse fluently in several languages
- Pretend I am someone else on a blind date
- Set up a feeder goldfish rescue organization
- Get in the 15 items or less line in the grocery store with a full cart
- Tell my children that they are adopted (when they aren’t)
I have many more wild and wacky things to do before I shuffle off this mortal coil. I have far more bad puns with which to torture my friends and family. I have to forget self-consciousness and throw restraint out the window. I will give out compliments like meter maids give parking tickets. I will hug loved ones more. I will wink at total strangers and either make their day or give them heart failure. Life is short and, after all, I only have 10,000 days left.