SiD’s Sphere!!

I was watching the movie ‘Dad’ today. I didn’t see the whole movie because I had to run errands but the part I did watch was about how a man who’s stayed away for a while comes back to his aging father who couldn’t even button his shirt on his own. When told that he’s just got to realize that his father is an old man now, and he needs to understand what old age means, he says

A time when more people wished you were dead than alive.

That got me thinking. Life expectancy may be on the rise thanks to advance in medical science but is longevity really desirable? And has the quality of life at an old age improved too?

My grandfather passed away almost 6 months ago. A few months before that he could barely walk, see, talk, eat, or even recognize anyone. Yet everyone still talks about how easy his last moments were. I didn’t understand. If that was easy, what would a difficult death be?

Because, I’ve started spending more time with my grandmother since, I got to hear a lot about our older relatives that I didn’t even know existed. My grandparents’ cousins, their friends etc. And in the few months following my grandfather’s death, a number of other older relatives passed away too. When my parents came back from the funerals and talked about it, they would tell us how so and so relative had spent months on artificial life support system. When the tubes and masks were finally taken off, the emaciated body had hardly any flesh left. The arms and the back of palms would be swollen with needle marks yet no one could stand the idea of letting go of their loved one.

And there were the relatives who were operated upon only to spend the rest of their life in a vegetated state.

Is a medically prolonged long life really worth living, then? Back in the day when food wasn’t treated, preserved or adulterated there were less diseases to begin with. Whether long or short, people led healthier lives. Today, even though medical research continues to come up with cures for various ailments; from where I see it, the world is a sicker place today.

So what good has science and technology really been? If not for the industrial revolution, or the steam engine, or the flying machine, the world today would have been a better place in a lot of ways. Less pollution. Less disease. Less stress. Less materialistic lives. Better, more sincere and more long lasting relationships despite the lack of communication medium available today.

Life today is less human and more mechanical. And maybe there isn’t much difference anyway between a battery run pacemaker and a real heart. So maybe it doesn’t make a difference anyway, if some machines keep man’s clock ticking for a few more hours..

I don’t *fucking* want to write no more!

I don’t *fucking* want to write no more!

I don’t *fucking* want to write no more!

I don’t *fucking* want to write no more!

I don’t *fucking* want to write no more!

I don’t *fucking* want to write no more!

I don’t *fucking* want to write no more!

I don’t *fucking* want to write no more!

I wish the mind came with a stop button. I don’t think I’d even mind an eject option.