Getting Older? Don't Applaud Yourself too Much

People don't usually change much as they get older. They simply become more what they've always been. Someone who's been a good example of why the human race needs to go extinct will become a poster child for Why it Sucks to Get Old. You have a choice of whether to move gracefully into old age, or limp into it as nothing more than a bad cartoon of yourself. That choice remains open as long as you are mentally and physically functional, and capable of enhancing those states.

But the hard truth is that most people choose, consciously or not, to settle for the life of a full-time automaton and part-time couch potato. They do the job they're paid for, put on a decent show of being a good citizen, but do even better as consumers. They either die suddenly, from a heart attack, or slowly and painfully, leaving their families with memories they could have done just as well without. And when the last of the people who knew them kicks the bucket, they might as well never have existed, for all the difference they made to the world. So, how much respect are they owed, are you owed, in old age, for the achievement of getting older, but not wiser?