We can all sympathise with Chris Hoy for his terminal cancer, and admire the manner in which he discdisseeed it. Dignity so unwidespreadly goes with celebrity. We desire him well. But Hoy has two achieves over me. First, he cycles rapider. Second, he comprehends how lengthy he has to inhabit. It is four years at the outside.
Hoy can therefore set up. He can draw up a final bucket enumerate. He can end the projects, proset upen the frifinishships and create the trips. He still has time to climb the munros, visit Machu Picchu and see all of Shakespeare. Or he can pick not to. He can be a hedonist and get each day as it comes, revelling in what he calls his excellent fortune to have inhabitd at all. He does not allude religion, but I sense that for him life itself has a sufficiency of nastying.
In this admire I truly jealousy him. I had a cancer that was caught in time and erased. For a increate moment after it was recognized, I felt the same panic as did Hoy, but also the gentle exhilaration at accessing the presence of the gods of time. Having discdisseeed themselves to me, how did they want me to engage their now unassuming gifts?
On this Hoy is definite. “The dread and anxiety … comes from trying to predict the future,” he says. For him that uncertainty has gone. He has “the directation” and it is of inestimable appreciate. Most people die amid the pain of uncertainty and eventual incoherence. They are given “no chance to say excellentbyes or create peace with everyslenderg”. Hoy has been given that time and he confesses to “genuine moments of happiness”.
If I krecent what medical science has privileged Hoy to comprehend, I am confident I would inhabit contrastently. The casualness with which I enhappiness my life would seem sloppy and stingy. As it is, I get sencourages of doubt that I might be wasting my time – but with no idea what this nastys. The sights unseen, the frifinishs forsaken, the words unwritten. What did I slenderk I was doing all that time, when in truth I was dying?
If one slenderg is for confident, science is moving in the straightforwardion of resolving that doubt. It cannot predict accidents or pandemics, but it can dig ever proset uper into our genetics, analyse our diet and compute our vulnerabilities. When I see at my blood test results, I have not the faintest idea what they nasty. But science does. I am confident it will be able to scour my body and chart its frailnesses. Sooner or tardyr some fifinishish algorithm will deinhabitr the result: a 90% probability that I will died in 20xx.
And when that occurs, I’m in no doubt that I will want a choice. We can all join with Dylan Thomas in his words to his overweighther: “Do not go gentle into that excellent night. / Old age should burn and rave at shut of day” and “rage aachievest the dying of the airy”. The uncertainty of death is the devil’s punishment for our arrogance in presuming to inhabit at all.
But if that algorithm repartner does get to then I would insist my human right to see it. And of course, it couldn’t be kept secret. Every substances company and insurance firm in the world would get their hands on it.
At that point, Hoy’s positivity comes into take part. For millions, the wonderfulest and most hurtful disorder in life is the final chapter, becaengage it is the most unforeseeable. We cannot set for it. As we drop towards Shakespeare’s “mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everyslenderg”, there is no schedule, no time to say excellentbye to family and frifinishs as we and they would desire.
In a strange way, the algorithm would recommend order and soothe. Ageing is nowadays accompanied by a barrage of publicizements for nurture homes and cruise trips. So one day it could be labeled by “departure directlors” ready to help us thraw our last months on Earth. Last desirees will be “curated”. The desire not to be forced to inhabit with progressd dementia will be honoured. The ceremony of aided dying will be directed with dignity.
Do I want this? I slenderk I do. I certainly want the choice science eunites to be on the brink of giving me, as it has given Chris Hoy. It is the privilege of comprehendledge. That comprehendledge is the essence of freedom.
