The cover of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer startles: Grim Reaper in cowl and robe, track shoes and wrist weights, face set in the grinning grimace of skulls and fitness obsessives, going at it on a treadmill.
Ehrenreich was startled too, some years ago, by a report that “the immune system actually abets the growth and spread of tumors, which is like saying that the fire department is indeed staffed by arsonists.” The body carries conflict within it, and try as we might to manage and alter this, we can’t ultimately control the outcome or forestall death. I couldn’t follow all the technicalities of Ehrenreich’s argument, nor do I share all her views about life and death, but the question she raises is spot on: how much of our lives should be given to living longer when we have “other, often more consequential things to do.” She takes on the medical complex, anti-aging nostrums, and fitness and wellness industries which tempt us with essentially futile illusions of control. (Ehrenreich’s not called “a veteran muckraker” for nothing.)
I admire the nearly 77-year-old Ehrenreich’s recent revolt against screenings, exams, smears etc. urged upon her for “prevention” and her feisty resistance to faddish longevity diets and self-denial practiced by her demographic, where “health is indistinguishable from virtue.” She eats well, she says, exercises because it feels good when she does, and will seek medical help for an urgent problem but is no longer interested in looking for problems undetectable to her. “I gradually came to realize that I was old enough to die,” she writes, old enough “not to incur any more suffering, annoyance, or boredom in the pursuit of a longer life.”
Chronicles of Aging 
When we are fixated on living longer rather than on living well we can become neurotic, and that is not healthy!
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Another book I’d to read. Thanks. Unlike some close friends, I’ve been blessed with good health and don’t take it for granted. Tomorrow things could change. But mostly, I avoid the doctor’s. I try to go at least once every ten years or so. When my kids were young, I just prayed that I could be there for them. Now, they’re independent and I consider these declining years as a bonus. I prefer quality over quantity. But…I’m thinking it’s more complicated than that.
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Well we never know how complicated it may or may not be! It must have been your job that gave you your good health. Best to you!
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Love the title, Dora, and the comment about Ehrenrich realizing she was “old enough to die.” Of course, in a sense, one is always “old enough to die,” but there does come a time when one realizes that death is the culmination of the phase of life that one has entered. My husband, Bill, just had his 86th birthday; I am 80. We are both in good health; both still enjoying life and are both engaged in work we feel is important–and yet, there is also a deep sense of being in a waiting room waiting for our names to be called.
Neither of us has any desire to do any heroic measures to prolong life. It is time to let go, yield, and enjoy the moments given to us. That ability to enjoy may well end. That is the price of life. We shall accept that price with as much grace as possible.
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I continue to find your life and attitude and ongoing work an inspiration, Loretta. Thank you!
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