Life without a strategy for the end

There is a kind of silent pact we make with life: we know it ends, but we behave as if it were just a distant rumor. Death is the only democratic certainty we have, but we treat it as an unlikely accident. And it’s not just death that we avoid thinking about. We don’t want to think about the years that precede it, often long and demanding, that we pushed out of the picture, as if they weren’t with us.

We plan careers, vacations, investments, but there is a kind of blind spot when it comes to the most vulnerable phase of our lives. There is no strategy for the end, there is superstition: can thinking attract death? Is anticipating giving up?

We fear illness, the failing body, dependence. We know what is good for us: movement, bonds, stability, medical support, hours of sleep. It was never a question of lack of information, it is a refusal to decide. We want to live long, but we don’t want to do what is necessary to live well for long.

Aging is also a social process: who visits us, who listens to us, who keeps us connected to the world. This is built, but we prefer to believe that relationships resist due to inertia, as if affection did not require care.

On a financial level, we repeat the same mistake. We talk about autonomy, but we avoid doing the math, as if old age was always later. And when it arrives, it arrives with practical brutality: expenses, limitations, unforeseen dependencies.

There is also a less talked about and equally decisive dimension: the impact of our choices on others. Not preparing for the end is often transferring the problem to the children, to the partners, to those who remain. The absence of a decision is not neutral, it is a form of delegation without consent.

Perhaps the most uncomfortable thing is recognizing that we ignore why we choose to ignore. We prefer the illusion of a continuous present to the responsibility of a concrete future. We prefer not to look so we don’t have to act.

There is a price and it is paid in loss of quality of life, in avoidable suffering, in dependence that could have been alleviated. It is not about controlling the inevitable, but about influencing what is still open.

Thinking about death strategically is not morbid, it is vital. Force simple questions: how do I want to live my last years? With what autonomy? With whom? And what am I doing today to make this possible? The answer, almost always, is disconcerting. Try it, because planning your death is not morbid, it is an act of intelligence.