A Depressing Topic

About a month ago on Reddit, someone posted to AskReddit something along the lines of "What is the most mind-blowing quote you know?"

As I was perusing this topic, one of the highest-rated comments was roughly as follows: "If you choose not to have children, you will be the first person in your direct lineage since the very first humans that had children not to do so." Pretty powerful stuff.

Similarly, one of the other highest-rated comments was approximately this: "At some point, the last person to have ever known you or to have carried memories of you will die, and your existence will be gone forever." That's pretty chilling.

I hadn't really stewed over these quotes. From an "emotional" standpoint, I don't find these realities too intimidating. I mean, I'm a rationally-thinking human being that understands, frankly, time goes on and eventually generations pass by. I have no idea of the names of my relatives 20 generations removed. Heck, given the plight of my Jewish ancestors escaping persecution and my Bohemian ancestors escaping Communism, I don't even know the names of my relatives 3 generations removed. With the exception of Icelanders and a few remote people-groups, I think just about everyone else on planet Earth is in the same boat.

But today I think this idea finally started to resonate with me. I learned that my great-uncle on my father's side passed away. He was the last remaining child of those 2 generations removed from me on my paternal grandfather's side. So, just like that, an entire generation of my ancestry has been removed from existence. It's really weird to think about.

But here's where I'd like to put a positive spin on things. When you think about it, the fact that I witnessed, was in contact with, and personally knew almost all of my paternal grandfather's generation is kind of mind-blowing in itself. Not only did I know them, but I got to experience about a quarter-century with them living at the same time as me. That's incredible, isn't it?

Just 100 years ago the average life expectancy for a male in America was about 48 years. Knowing your grandparents was almost unheard of. Think of how far we've come in just 100 years. How much farther will we go by 2113? Given the miracles of modern medicine and the advancement of technology, it's not impractical to think that my grandchildren and great-grandchildren could live to be 200 or 250 years old. Impossible, right? Wrong! 100 years ago it was unfathomable that human beings would live on average into their 70s and 80s. Humans living to be 100 would have been laughed at. Now we consider it a normal event and are no longer blown away by the fact that humans can live to be 100. It's completely plausible. How is my declaration that my grandchildren will live to be 200 years old any more far-fetched than a scientist in 1913 saying that his grandchildren would live to be 80? It's really not that different when you think about it.

But here's where I think we are luckiest and where, as Americans, we are far too ignorant. In the status quo, there are still billions of people sharing our planet that will never meet their grandparents. One of my best friends in grad school is a heck of a guy from Zimbabwe. Three of his four grandparents were dead before he was even born. His grandmother is 64 years old. Not only is she the eldest person in her community, but he was the only one of all of the kids in his primary school to have a living grandparent. Pretty crazy, right? Here we can compare the life expectancy of a North Dakotan to a Zimbabwean and it's as though possibilities for one are endless and the other is just coming around to the standard of living in the 1900s. Yet we are inhabiting the same planet at the same time.

I guess the moral of the story is that were are incredibly lucky getting luckier. We shouldn't take that for granted. And who knows, maybe somewhere out there is a Zimbabwean blogging right now - part of the first generation in the developing world that will love long enough to meet all of their grandkids.