Verified by 
If you’re in your 60s or older, you may be in your final decade on life’s conveyer belt. That’s especially likely if you’re a man--We live 5.2 years shorter.
We face a macro choice: Do we “age gracefully,” or, as Dylan Thomas urged, “Rage.” Of course, there is a middle ground but few among us trod dead-center on the fence.
Wherever we fall on the continuum, most of us end up there unconsciously. In an attempt to make the decision more consciously and help us gain clarity on where on the continuum we want to be, here is an internal debate that might occur between an “Age Gracefully” advocate, whom I’ll call Grace, and a “Rage Against It” devotee, whom I’ll call Rager.
Grace: Let the river run, Rager. All your efforts to forestall aging probably make you more stressed and less happy than the benefits you derive.
Rager: Not true. Diet and exercise increase healthy lifespan and give me the peace of mind that I’ll probably live longer.
Grace: But you can’t help but have more anxiety and less pleasure from all that monitoring of your health---taking your blood pressure every day, taking all those supplements, rarely allowing yourself a piece of cheese—when the research is unclear on whether dietary cholesterol affects blood cholesterol, let alone lifespan, let alone healthy lifespan.
Rager: Whatever extra anxiety I have from focusing on my health is more than compensated for by my feeling I’ll likely live longer.
Grace: Well, what about your being ever more time-conscious, aware of your mortality? You’re working longer hours than ever. That’ll shorten your life more than all those supplements will lengthen it. All those are doing are giving you expensive urine.
Rager: There’s no data that working long hours is dangerous.
Grace: But rushing and being angry is—You ever hear of cortisol? Type-A behavior and your heart?
Rager: Whatever little reduction of my lifespan is caused by that is more than compensated for by my making a bigger contribution during the time I have.
Grace: So you see some more patients but you neglect your family. You leave no time for pleasure. When was the last time you took your family on vacation? I took my children and their kids on a cruise last year and we had the time of our lives. I wonder if I improved people’s lives more with that cruise than from all those extra patient hours you log.
Rager: So you spent time with your family. That doesn’t change your pothead son nor your lazy, so-called artist daughter. When I work with my patients, they’re more likely to live better as a result. Besides, I’m making money, which means I can leave more money to charity.
Grace: You’re not leaving your money to your children?
Rager: No. That would only give them yet more reason not to look for a decent job and do what it takes to hold one. My hard work will have yielded more good if I give it to a good charity like Smile Train, which, for $250, fixes a poor child's cleft palate.That turns someone who’d be shunned for life into a person who can fully flower, for herself, and for society.
Grace: How sure are you that your raging against the dying light is right?
Rager: Quite sure. How sure are you that your giving up is right?
Grace: I’m not giving up. I’m just recognizing there’s only so much you can control and that, especially as we get older, reallocating more of our time to pleasure, to gratitude, to gentle giving, is the wise way.
Rager: We’ll have to agree to disagree.
Marty Nemko's bio is in Wikipedia.
