first world problems, healthcare, lessons learned, social media

Man dreams of dying by age 75… Internet goes berserk.

I ripped off today’s “clever” featured photo a couple of weeks ago, when I was engaged with the rude commenter who kept calling me “stupid” and “inane”. I think it’s a photo that invites a second look and says something unexpected…

We’re on the fast track to spring! Pretty soon, the trees and flowers will be bursting with new life. As beautiful as spring always is, it’s also the season when my allergies burst into new life. But at least there will be fragrant flowers, warmer temperatures, and longer days.

Welcome to March. This month promises to suck, as it usually does. Bill has a business trip next week, and part of the week after that. At the end of the month, we have a big trip to Stuttgart planned, so we can see the dentist and have procedures done. Meanwhile, Arran is still hanging in there. I will take him to the vet today for a treatment and exam. He really is an amazing dog with a strong will to live. As I’ve learned, after years of having dogs in my life, not all dogs are like that. Not all people are like that, either.

This morning, as I was waiting for Bill to come out of the bathroom, I noticed an October 2014 era article in The Atlantic that was reposted on Facebook. It was provocatively titled “Why I Hope to Die at Age 75”, and accompanied by the broadly smiling visage of a healthy looking man with glasses and grey hair. The author of the article, also the man in the photo, was named Ezekiel J. Emmanuel. He had subtitled his article with this thought: An argument that society and families—and you—will be better off if nature takes its course swiftly and promptly.

I was immediately intrigued. To be very honest, I’m not one of those people who wants to live for a super long time. I have a tendency toward depression, which means I often look at the dark side of things. I also had an angst ridden childhood that, at times, has been hard to overcome.

I know my childhood certainly wasn’t as bad as some people’s childhoods are. In fact, I’d say I probably had a very privileged childhood on many levels, at least in terms of material comforts. However, I often felt like I didn’t belong, especially within my own family. I never seemed to live up to other people’s expectations of me. After awhile, I had the same high expectations for myself, which I rarely managed to meet.

Frequently hearing my mom say things like “If you didn’t look so much like my mother, I’d swear I picked up the wrong baby at the hospital.” or “I never meant to have a fourth child.” or “Where did you COME from?” wasn’t helpful. She made it seem like my presence– which she and my dad were responsible for– was a huge inconvenience to her. That sentiment came through to me loud and clear, and it colored my world view.

Of course, now I know that my mom is imperfect, as we all are. Her comments were borne out of frustrations that had nothing to do with me. I just happened to be on the receiving end of them, because I was a child, and had no other choice. I eventually got away from that shit, but the memories still linger. I don’t have children of my own, nor do I have a burgeoning career, except as a blogger who writes things that few people read. Why should I hang around to be 100, like my Granny did?

So I read the article in The Atlantic, which leads with this hooky paragraph:

Seventy-five.

That’s how long I want to live: 75 years.

This preference drives my daughters crazy. It drives my brothers crazy. My loving friends think I am crazy. They think that I can’t mean what I say; that I haven’t thought clearly about this, because there is so much in the world to see and do. To convince me of my errors, they enumerate the myriad people I know who are over 75 and doing quite well. They are certain that as I get closer to 75, I will push the desired age back to 80, then 85, maybe even 90.

I’m not surprised that Emmanuel’s relatives are horrified by the statements he’s bravely uttered to them. It’s taboo to make comments indicating that one hopes for death at ANY age. Remember a few months ago, when Queen Elizabeth II died? She was 96 years old, and had lost her beloved husband less than two years prior. People were calling her death TRAGIC! Isn’t that insane?

Queen Elizabeth II lived for 96 years, a reigning monarch for 70 years, in a modern country, surrounded by wealth, rubbing elbows with important people, and adored by so many! She didn’t spend her last weeks languishing, alone and forgotten in a nursing home. She didn’t die at age 20, on the cusp of womanhood. She lived a full life, and it was simply time for her to move on. But people were calling her death tragic!

Emmanuel’s article was written in 2014, which was about six years before the whole world was caught in the grips of COVID-19. Countless elderly people died of the illness. People are still dying of COVID, although it seems like folks aren’t talking about it as much these days. Frankly, I’m glad they aren’t talking about it so much. I’m delighted there’s a lot less fighting over face masks and vaccines. Things are feeling decidedly more normal, although as I could see in the Facebook comment section for Emmanuel’s article, lots of people are still mourning the loss.

One lady bitterly wrote about how her elderly dad died “before his time” in a rehabilitation hospital, because people were fighting over wearing a “fucking mask”. I can tell she misses him. She’s still grieving his death. But did he really die too early? Or was COVID-19 just one of many diseases conspiring to end his life? She blames people for not wanting to wear masks, but even wearing face masks wasn’t going to stop COVID-19 in its tracks. All the masks could do was slow down the spread a bit.

I remember a couple of years ago, I wrote about the time I got a venomous private message from some guy who was upset when I took issue with a comment he made about an elderly couple who had just gotten married. The groom was 91, and his wife was 86. They wore masks during their wedding ceremony, but the wife’s mask happened to slip beneath her nose. Someone got a photo, and it was shared in the article about their nuptials. An all knowing MALE wrote that the bride’s improper face mask wearing was going to send her to an “early” grave.

In my post about this, I wrote:

I was a bit gobsmacked by the guy’s comment. I mean, these folks have already lived a normal life span. Millie is 86. Sam is 91. They aren’t going to be going to an “early” grave, regardless of what kills them. They aren’t teenagers, or even middle-aged. And they sure as hell didn’t need to be chastised by some busybody guy who feels the need to confront others about how they wear their masks on camera. I made a comment to that effect. Next thing I know, I’ve got a spam message from this guy who chewed me out, telling me that a death from COVID-19 is a premature death and calling me “stupid”. Of course he blocked me, so I couldn’t respond.

Likewise, a couple of weeks ago, I got repeatedly insulted by an Irish Times reader who took issue with my comment that “life is 100 percent fatal”. We were commenting on an article about a woman who was publicly fat shamed for wanting to order a cheese course. The person who called my comments “inane” and “stupid” was pushing for health promotion, writing to me as if I’m completely ignorant on the topic. As someone with master’s degrees in public health and social work, I’m literally not at all ignorant about health preservation. I just don’t agree that life should be about denying oneself simple pleasures over fears of a heart attack or a stroke.

Moderation is the key, of course, but we all have our own ideas of what moderation means. For some people, the fear of a heart attack or another chronic disease is enough to make them want to avoid certain indulgences. Other people don’t feel that way at all. They’d like to enjoy their cheese course in peace. That doesn’t necessarily make them reckless, foolhardy, or stupid.

After trying to maintain decorum and polite discourse with the insulting commenter, I’d finally had enough. I ended up telling off the stranger, who had relentlessly kept insulting me as she pushed her health promotion point. I explained that I would rather eat what I want with my friends, and live a shorter lifespan, than not eat what I want, and have to linger on this planet with “miserable bitches” like her. Then, I asked her to “kindly fuck off and leave me alone”, which she kindly did.

Ezekiel Emmanuel, author of The Atlantic piece that prompted today’s post, writes:

I am sure of my position. Doubtless, death is a loss. It deprives us of experiences and milestones, of time spent with our spouse and children. In short, it deprives us of all the things we value.

But here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.

I see nothing wrong or controversial about what Emmanuel wrote here. I come from a long line of people who have lived for a long time. My Granny was almost 101 when she died. She was amazingly active and beloved in her golden years, but when it was time for her to go, I have no doubt that she was ready. Likewise, my dad, who was a very healthy and active man, died at age 81 after spending six years in the hellish cognitive and physical decline of Lewy Body Dementia. His brother, my beloved Uncle Brownlee, had a stroke in 2019 while he was out and about. Two weeks later, he was gone. Somehow, I think Brownlee’s death, albeit at a younger age, was markedly better than my dad’s.

Emmanuel further writes:

By the time I reach 75, I will have lived a complete life. I will have loved and been loved. My children will be grown and in the midst of their own rich lives. I will have seen my grandchildren born and beginning their lives. I will have pursued my life’s projects and made whatever contributions, important or not, I am going to make. And hopefully, I will not have too many mental and physical limitations. Dying at 75 will not be a tragedy. Indeed, I plan to have my memorial service before I die. And I don’t want any crying or wailing, but a warm gathering filled with fun reminiscences, stories of my awkwardness, and celebrations of a good life. After I die, my survivors can have their own memorial service if they want—that is not my business.

Again… he’s not wrong. And it’s not that he’s saying he’s planning to off himself. In fact, in the next paragraph, he even writes that he’s against assisted suicide. He claims people who want help killing themselves are usually suffering from depression. Personally, I disagree with him on that. I don’t think a person has to be depressed to realize that a progressive brain tumor or Alzheimer’s Disease is inevitably going to rob them of their dignity and self-determination. I don’t think a person who wants to pass on before that can happen is necessarily “depressed”. To me, it makes good logical sense to want to get help in dying, especially under those conditions. I’m not the only one who feels that way, either. Moreover, living with unrelenting depression is also miserable. In a case when depression won’t abate, maybe assisted suicide makes sense.

But then he continues:

I am talking about how long I want to live and the kind and amount of health care I will consent to after 75. Americans seem to be obsessed with exercising, doing mental puzzles, consuming various juice and protein concoctions, sticking to strict diets, and popping vitamins and supplements, all in a valiant effort to cheat death and prolong life as long as possible. This has become so pervasive that it now defines a cultural type: what I call the American immortal.

I reject this aspiration. I think this manic desperation to endlessly extend life is misguided and potentially destructive. For many reasons, 75 is a pretty good age to aim to stop.

So basically, what Emmanuel is saying is, he’s going to stop trying to prolong his life beyond the age of 75. That means if a doctor finds out he has cancer or some other debilitating, chronic disease, he’s not necessarily going to seek treatment– particularly aggressive treatment. He might not bother with screenings. He recognizes that the older one gets, the more help they need into keeping going. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable observation. At some point, there are diminishing returns.

To read some of the comments on Facebook, though… So many people complained about ageism and devaluing the elderly. One person even compared the writer’s ideas to that of a Nazi, as the Nazis saw people in certain “undesirable or unproductive groups”, such as the elderly, disabled, LGBTQ, or those who weren’t white and Christian, as “useless eaters”. I saw more than one person complaining that the article was going to give people “dangerous ideas”.

All the guy did was share an opinion. No one is being forced to agree with or actively support Ezekiel Emmanuel’s ideas. They’re just food for thought. I see no need for offense or outrage on this subject. Emmanuel is not trying to say that all elderly people should have an expiration date. He’s simply sharing his thoughts, and perhaps stimulating other people to think about how they feel on this topic. He’s saying that when he’s 75, he hopes to die. It doesn’t mean he absolutely will die at 75. It doesn’t even mean that he can’t or won’t change his mind. It’s just a thought. Why are so many people afraid of people sharing their thoughts? And why do people have to be so critical and condescending when someone shares a thought with which they disagree?

One commenter wrote this, and I heartily agree:

Stunning how this article is being misconstrued by people with anecdotes about healthy old folk. I’m 77. Boringly healthy but I stopped all routine tests, pokings and proddings before I was 70. I may get some things done like cataract surgery since I am the family driver. However if I get something nasty I don’t plan on extreme measures. It’s in my will etc. For every healthy elder anecdote there are thousands of elderly getting major surgery when they cannot care for themselves at all. The “children” are desperate to …save Mom. Well, don’t save me (or the good doctor) if I can’t get to the bathroom by myself, thank you very much.

And others made really tone deaf comments, or complained when the tone deaf are rightfully invited to fuck off…

I don’t blame the first commenter for telling the second one to fuck off. What a dumb comment.

My Uncle Ed died last summer at age 85. I hadn’t spoken to him in some time, mainly because he’d slipped into Trumpian cognitive dissonance and labeled me a “liberal nutjob”. However, I did hear that Ed had a mass on his lung that he’d opted not to treat. Frankly, I can’t blame him for that. He lost his beloved wife, Nancy, in 2010. Donald Trump was no longer the president and the election wasn’t going to be overturned. What was the point of sticking around until age 86, when there were many loved ones who had passed before him? Maybe Heaven is real. At some point, it makes sense to pass on. Dying is part of living, and it’s something not a single one of us can avoid. If you were born, you will someday die. So you might as well live life on your own terms and enjoy it as you see fit, as much as you’re able.

I don’t have a problem with Ezekiel Emmanuel’s publicly stated thoughts about wanting to die at age 75. It’s just something to think about. Doesn’t mean any of us are going to actually do something to make death happen at a specific time. I don’t feel anger or fear in reading that idea, because in the grand scheme of things, that’s really all it is. Maybe it makes sense to him, even if it doesn’t make sense to other people. He should be allowed to speak his mind, and other people should have enough faith in themselves and other people to be able to hear his thoughts without feeling threatened by them.

Don’t tell people to “shut up”, simply because they dare to convey an idea that you can’t yet fathom. Be brave enough to hear them out. Maybe you’ll even learn something new.

These are just my thoughts, though. Please don’t take them as gospel… not that I expect anyone would.

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communication, condescending twatbags, modern problems, social media, stupid people

Be careful, now. Nobody is “too fat” for a knuckle sandwich…

I am currently in dog crap hell. For once, Arran isn’t the culprit. About a half hour ago, Noyzi came to me and put his head in my lap, a sign that he wanted to go outside. I let him go out while I checked on the progress of the laundry in the dryer. When I came back, Noyzi was still outside, distracted from taking care of his business. I waited a few more minutes before finally shooing him inside. It’s really cold outside, and I saw a pile of crap in the yard. I figured Noyzi was done.

After a few minutes at my computer, I realized I needed to visit the loo myself. I was wearing slippers when I felt that awful sensation, and the aroma assaulted my olfactory bulb. Noyzi had left a large pile of crap right at the door to my office. And because he never has accidents in the house, I was not expecting it. I cleaned up what I thought was all of it, cringing as the smell wafted into my office. I got up again and my bare foot found the one turd I hadn’t seen. It was cold and squishy, and since I had smashed it, the smell got worse. I started yelling out swear words as Noyzi slunk away, guiltily.

He really is a good dog. We’ve had him since October 2020, and I can count on one hand the number of times he’s had an accident in the house. Arran, on the other hand, has never been 100 percent accurate about housetraining. Arran, however, has the experience and good sense to know to do it downstairs, where I won’t immediately discover it, and will smell it long before I step in it.

I think the smell of dog shit has finally dissipated. My slippers are getting a wash. Now I’m ready to write about an article I saw in The Irish Times yesterday. Actually, now that I think about it, the fact that I started this post with an anecdote about dog shit seems especially appropriate. To me, a lot of cheese smells like shit. I don’t like most cheeses. Most of the ones I will eat must be melted first. But a lot of people do love to eat cheese. Sometimes, they’ll eat it in lieu of dessert.

Irish Times writer Róisín Ingle published a piece yesterday about a horrifying incident she experienced at a restaurant. Ingle explains that she’s been “judged” for her weight all of her life. She’s developed admiration for the singer, Lizzo, a Black, zaftig, flute playing wonder, who has become an inspiration for many people, including those who struggle with obesity. One day, a Lizzo t-shirt showed up in the mail. Ingle wondered if maybe she’d ordered it late at night after drinking too much wine. Later, a friend clarified that she’d sent the t-shirt as a way of boosting Ingle’s spirits.

Ingle writes: I put my Lizzo T-shirt on to watch her win Record of the Year at the Grammys over the weekend. She sang her self-love anthem Special surrounded by a gospel choir. “Fame is pretty new but I’ve been used to people judging me/That’s why I move the way I move and why I’m so in love with me.”

Ingle continues…

Lizzo moves through the world in her body with no apologies. The classically trained flautist has been playing the same tune for years, telling fans they should love themselves, celebrate their talents and reject societal expectations. She started to become a sort of mentor to me when she talked about her fitness regime a few years ago around the time I had started to exercise regularly for the first time in my life. “It may come as a surprise to some of y’all, that I’m not working out to have your ideal body type. I’m working out to have my ideal body type. And you know what type that is? None of your f**king business.”

As someone who has also been harassed about my weight, I am highly inclined to agree. Fat shamers and concern trolls can just fuck right off. And that’s exactly how I felt as Ingle wrote about what happened to her when she was celebrating at a restaurant with her mother and, evidently, some other people who didn’t know or care about her.

Ingle writes: It was a jolly occasion, a gathering of fun, clever people. We were choosing what to order and I was musing aloud about whether to have dessert. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth so I asked the waiter whether I could have a bit of cheese instead. He was about to answer but a woman at the table intervened.

Uh oh… this doesn’t sound good at all! And it wasn’t. According to Ingle, the woman roared, “No, you mustn’t have cheese! You are too fat for cheese! No cheese for you!”

Ingle sat there and “took in” what had just transpired. The woman apparently realized that she’d shocked and offended her target, as Ingle writes that she’d “insisted she was coming from a ‘good’ place”. The fat shaming concern troll explained that she was “worried” about Ingle’s health as she aged. Evidently, the fat shamer had been overweight all her life, and felt she must warn the writer of the doom that awaited her if she ate cheese during a celebratory lunch with her mother.

Ingle handled the interaction better than I probably would have. She wrote that in the past, she might have left the table, gone to the toilets to cry, starved herself for a couple of days, or engaged in some combination of those actions. But this time, she simply responded calmly to the woman, saying “what she had said was unnecessary. I told her that she didn’t know what might be going on for the person she was cheese-shaming. I pointed out that the psychological stress caused by her comments could be far worse for a person than a few slices of Brie. I told her that ultimately, my body, other people’s bodies, were none of her fecking business.”

And then, to my surprise, Ingle wrote She said nothing for a few moments. “I’d never thought of it quite like that,” she said. She had done this kind of thing before, she told me. I don’t think she’ll do it again.

This response from Ingle, while very mature, is not very satisfying to me. I can’t stand concern trolls. I don’t believe for a minute that people who make rude comments about other people’s bodies care at all about them. They certainly don’t care about the psychological damage they do to people who are struggling with their body image. Telling someone they are “too fat for cheese”, especially in front of a crowd, will do nothing but ruin the person’s day and give them bad memories.

My title suggests that I might be inclined toward violence if someone did this to me. Rest assured, I probably would not have given the woman a knuckle sandwich. She wouldn’t have been worth going to jail over. But you can bet that I would make her think twice about ever making a comment like that to me again. That’s if I ever again allowed her to be in my presence after that incident.

I generally get a kick out of the comments from Irish readers. Sure enough, they didn’t disappoint. I even added one of my own.

I think I would tell the cheese shaming buttinski that her health is far more at risk by butting into other people’s business than it is to eat all the cheese she could ever want for the rest of her life. She might just be trading her cheese habit for a knuckle sandwich.

However, I couldn’t help but notice one guy, name of Mel O’Brien from Cork, who left some very rude comments. He left so many of them that I felt compelled to check out his Facebook profile. Mr. O’Brien has just fifteen friends, and has made a lot of his comments public. I guess his fat shaming didn’t go over well with some readers…

Mel wrote several comments like the ones above. At first, I just thought he was a fucking jerk. Now, I think he’s crazy. Behold…

I’ve been suspended from FACEBOOK, again, with no way of responding to this bullshit. So all I say to FB and the person or persons who complained about some comment I made, is FUCK OFF!

I kept scrolling and saw lots of pro Russia posts, along with conspiracy theories about the COVID vaccines. Obviously, Mel doesn’t play with a full deck. Yet some people still want to be friends with him. Here’s what he posted a couple of days ago.

Just to make things clear: I’m on FB to keep in touch with people who are already my friends. I’m not looking for new friends, and most of the friend requests I’ve received in the past couple of years have been men masquerading as women. I don’t want to be friends with anyone from the LGBT crowd, since I’m offended by this “pride” nonsense. What do they have to be proud about? So please don’t send me a friends request unless we know each other from the past. Thanks.

Below is a post from January 1, 2023…

I’m a bit pissed off today, January 1, because I post videos that I believe to be important, but last year virtually no one watched any of them. Too busy getting their jabs, I guess.

Another reason I’m annoyed is YouTube ending the suspension of my comments, due to some comment I made “may offend” community guidelines. They never told me which comment “may offend” someone. An evil bunch, probably members of the mentally-ill LGBT crowd. I’ve received several warnings, and a threat of removing my site in 2022. So much for freedom of expressing my beliefs

Facebook also doesn’t like my comments, and I’ve been suspended a couple of times last year. More evil people.

I was permanently banned from Twitter in 2019, but they had the gall to email me last year informing me that my ban had ended. Needless to say, I won’t be going back to their garbage.

THE ONLY TWO PEOPLE I KNOW WHO GOT JABS BOTH DIED LAST YEAR SUDDENLY OF HEART ATTACKS. COINCIDENCE, EH? SCAMDEMIC.

This planet is controlled by the forces of evil, which control is made easier by compliant sheeple who believe anything they’re told, forgetting the lesson of the WMD.

THINGS ARE GETTING WORSE, NOT BETTER.

It’s sad and scary that there are so many people in the world who feel so entitled to share their ugliness with everyone. And then when they get called out for it, they continue to be ugly. Not only is Mr. O’Brien a fat shamer; he’s also a homophobe.

I generally enjoy The Irish Times. I think the journalism is excellent and often very entertaining. I also enjoy reading comments from the Irish, who are often hilariously witty. On the other hand, I’ve noticed that quite a few of them admire Donald Trump, promote conspiracy theories and other stupid nonsense, and opine about things about which they apparently know little. It occurs to me that the last time I was in Ireland, I saw a Confederate Battle Flag. It was a sticker on the back of a taxi cab. And now that I think about it, quite a lot of American Trump supporters are people with ancestral backgrounds like mine. 😉

Anyway, good on Róisín Ingle for responding diplomatically to the fat shamer who tried to deprive her of Gouda. I used to care a lot more about what people thought of my body, too. I think I got over that when I realized how short life really is.

In 2021, a former Peace Corps colleague of mine celebrated his birthday with friends and family. Then, as he was walking home, he got hit by a car and was left for dead. Sadly, he did die of his injuries, and at just 58 years of age. He was a bright, vibrant person who touched many people over his lifetime. I don’t think he had a weight problem when he passed. In fact, I like to think that he was happy when he left this world… having just spent his last hours with people he loved, celebrating his birthday, rather than languishing from a chronic illness for months on end.

I think of my old friend, and realize that while it’s always a good and wise thing to take care of your health, it’s also a good and wise thing to enjoy your life. Because now, more than ever, you just never know when your life will end. So I say, eat the cheese if you want it. Tell the fat shamers like Mel O’Brien to fuck right off. Try not to give anyone a knuckle sandwich, though… unless they really, really deserve one. 😉 In the case of the fat shaming idiot Ingle encountered at her lunch celebration, I would not have faulted her…

Incidentally, as I was writing this, we got a delivery of Dutch cheeses. I don’t eat much cheese, so it’s mostly for Bill, who loves cheese. I’m sure he will be delighted to try them later…

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