I stumbled on an interesting article today about our assumptions about growing old.
The Wall Street Journal piece “Why Everything You Think about Aging May Be Wrong” examines people’s expectations about growing older and compares them to older adults’ actual experiences.
In an age where bureaucrats are denying people health care coverage because they’ve “outlived their life expectancy” and assisted suicide advocates are harping about “quality of life,” I found it interesting that older Americans aren’t experiencing the difficulties that younger Americans think they will.
Older adults are more satisfied with their lives than their younger counterparts think they will be at the same age. Younger adults rank age-related difficulties like memory loss, depression, serious illness, and being a burden significantly higher than Americans over 65 do, according to a study from the Pew Research Center.
We need to be very careful about our fears and make sure they don’t lead us to devalue life. We can not accurately measure someone’s “quality of life” just as we can’t measure the worth of a human life.