Just How Long Do You Want To Live?

One of the nice things about life is that you don’t know when you are going to die.

Not knowing when you will die allows you to accept life as it comes. You can put off getting your life in order because, after all, no one knows what lies around the bend.

Microsoft and NBC changed all that for me. I’ll never be the same.

Knowing when you are going to die depending on actions that you can control is not especially liberating, despite the belief that knowing the truth will set you free.

While cruising MSNBC’s Web page, I paused to examine a story about U.S. life expectancy hitting an all-time high of 76.1 years. My own category in the accompanying graph - the guilt-ridden, white-male category - showed life expectancy at 73.8 years.

That was an interesting statistic, but it didn’t necessarily apply to me because the numbers are averages for the various measured categories, including one for all U.S. citizens. I felt confident that I would beat the 73.8 average. Then again, you never know, do you?

But the story contained a link that said, “Test Your Life Expectancy.” I clicked.

A long series of questions about your lifestyle, your work and play habits, your family and your attitudes on a Web site titled “How Long Will You Survive On Earth?” concluded with two buttons: “Tell me my life expectancy” and “Forget it!” I ignored the implied warning.

I am not immortal, darn it. Worse, if I don’t change my way of living, I won’t live long enough to hit the average life expectancy of my white male colleagues. It’s sobering to know your age and year of death.

There were about 70 possible answers to 24 questions that this computer program used to compute your life expectancy. Using my original questionnaire as a base, I changed the answers one at a time to find out what I could do to improve my life expectancy.

For instance, I could add two years to my life if I lived on a farm, just as I would die two years sooner if I moved to an urban area with a population over two million.

I could add another year to my life if I stayed within posted speed limits. I may forfeit this year.

Even if I can’t keep my motorcycle under all the posted speed limits, I can gain that year back if I stop drinking alcohol. This wouldn’t be a problem, although until now I hadn’t planned to change.

I could add two years to my life if I exercised twice a week and four years if I exercised strenuously five times a week for at least a half-hour. This I am willing to do for four extra years to my life.

The questionnaire doesn’t include smoking cigars, but I plugged in the equivalency of cigarettes and learned that I could add six years to my life if I stopped. I’m thinking about it.

Another four years could be added to my life if I swapped barbecue, chicken-fried steaks and cream gravy for green leafy vegetables and all those other foods I poke fun at.

Add to that another four years on this earth if I were not overweight.

I already have extra years added to my life for being happy and easygoing and getting annual checkups. With no particular difficulty I could live a lot longer by changing some of my bad habits.

The questionnaire says I could add six years to my life if I got married again, one year if I lived in the United Kingdom and three years if I lived in Spain. If I lived in Zaire, I’d already be dead. And I could add seven years to my life if I were a woman.

So now I know what to do. I’ll get a sex-change operation, get skinny, get married, move to Spain, stop smoking cigars, eat broccoli sprouts and live to be 123. But will I still be happy and easygoing?

xxxx