Control

We as humans crave control, that fickle beast that haunts our every dream. We want to be our own boss. Make our own rules. Get the high ground within our own mind.

To some extent, we want to control how we die. We want to go in our sleep. Some of us want to go in a bang. Some of us even go so far as to end our life, one last desperate bid for control in a world that gives us none.

But life does not offer us that sweet control. Life throws curveballs. We grow old, we grow brittle. We break and we fall ill and we grow disfigured with time, our body and mind decaying as death approaches. For eons the concept of eternal youth has captivated us, enthralled us with its promises of beauty and health. But what would it mean? An eternal workforce, that would never need new hires? A stagnant society resistant to change? A constantly increasing population?

Does aging really mean a loss of control? Or would it be the lack thereof that truly leaves us helpless? For how do we ethically control a population when nobody dies? How can we provide jobs for the surplus of workers? How can we criticize groomers when they might look just like the children they prey upon? In our attempt to gain control, we would only lose ourselves in an endless spiral of chaos.

As for preserving life, what does that mean? Artificially stretching someone's mind and body farther than it should go? No, preserving life and accepting death go hand in hand, for preserving life is more about cherishing the memories left behind rather than pretending the empty seat at the table is full.

Death and aging scare us because we cannot control what happens to us. Religion and mythology are our attempts to control the uncontrollable. To give us a semblance of control when we have none. We cannot control how we die. We cannot control what if anything, happens after. And we cannot control what level of suffering we go through in our final years. Will we forget ourselves and our loved ones bit by bit? Will we go near comatose and let our families take on the burden of pulling the plug? Will we drain their life's savings in a futile attempt to prevent our body's collapse?

Maybe the idea of control is a myth itself, an intangible idea that doesn't exist. Our vague understanding of it is all that we have.

Because if there's one thing we can control, it's words. And we'll use them to argue, to agree, to protest and to celebrate. We'll use them for every situation that life throws at us. And that articulation of our emotions, our thoughts, that is what control means. We need no cure for aging to fix our problems. we have to do that ourself.