Around 15 years ago my path took me to New Mexico. I was there wooing my future wife. During this time we got a chance to see many of the natural sights of the Southwestern area of the USA. One of these was White Sands
NPS map of White Sands National Park
It is a spectacular dune field made up of around 4.1 billion tones of gypsum sand that cover an area over 200 sq. miles. In the past the area was a much different place. It had lakes, streams, wild animals and people.
Recent studies of footprints found in the area seem to suggest that people were in the area as far back as 23,000 to 21,000 years ago. This finding would push back the date of when humans arrived in North America by about 5,000 to 7,500 years.
NPS Photo of footprints
It is cool to know that during our visit back in 2006 that we were following the footsteps of these early people who were out walking their own path …
A I said in my first post, life is a journey, make of many steps down many paths. There are only two known fixed points on the meandering path we take through life, the start and the end, birth and death.
I’m closer to the latter that the former on my journey and as each year passes, more events arise that remind me of this. I don’t fear death, my greatest fear is that I won’t be ready for it. Hopefully I have a good number of years left in me. How many? Taking a guess, I would say there are around 30 left in the tank.
However being the engineer than I am I like to know as much as possible related to the thing I’m working on, what are the facts and figures, the data, the models etc. So what do they have to say on my life expectancy?
“Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average time an organism is expected to live, based on the year of its birth, its current age, and other demographic factors including sex.”
If you read the Wikipedia article you will see that it gets more complex and there are many factors that influence life expectance. I might be able to do all the calculations myself but luckily there are a few Life Expectancy Calculators on-line that I can use:
A simple one is the USA Social Security Life Expectancy Calculator Which for me gave the following results:
Life Expectance based on Social Security Calculator
Not bad, close to the 30 years I guessed above. However look at the first note, it does not take into account many of the factors that affect life expectancy!
Using another calculator at LifeExpectancy.org Inputting my data and picking excellent health give me another 2.6 years for a total of 32.3 (84.5)
With excellent health
Out of interest I also ran the numbers if I was a heavy smoker and got only 21.5 years! Almost 11 years less.
Heavy Smoker
But we know that there are factors other that smoking that affect my life expectancy. Here is a calculator from John Hancock that takes some more factors into account.
Inputting my data, Male, 52, Non-Smoker, 5’9″, 172 lbs, Normal BP and cholesterol, no exercise, no alcohol, no driving violations, gives me another 35 years with a projected life expectancy of 90 years!
All these are based on the US population. I couldn’t find any Irish calculators but here is a UK based one from a insurance company that also gave me 90 years.
aviva.co.uk life expectance
I did find an Irish Times article that was based on UK life expectance data. Following along in my case life expectance is 81 + 4 years for genes, +2 for diet, +2 for marriage, +2 for mood for a total of 89.
So in conclusion, if I keep up a healthy lifestyle I should have another 30-38 years left on this journey. That is good to know and hopefully give me enough time that I will be ready to take that last step …
So how did you do? Was your life expectancy age in line with your expectations?
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”
Lao Tzu
Life is a journey, make of many steps down many paths.
Some people reach a point in life where they may question are they on the right path? Some may not, continuing their travels down a road in oblivion to where they come from, what is their destination? Some may stop, look around and be afraid.
I probably did all of these at various times in my life but I don’t recall that I consciously making the decision to pick a new path. Now in my semi-aware state, the first question I ask myself after stopping and looking around, is how the heck did I end up here? The second, which path to take?
The easy answer to the first is to say by sheer good luck! However I’m old enough (52 at the time of writing this) to know that is just a facetious and superficial answer. There were a multitude of factors and forces that lead me to the place where I am today. I hope in the future to explore some of them, but for the moment I’m just happy to be able to look around and savor the many paths around me …
Dreams, Designs and Destinations 