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Comment by exasperaited

3 days ago

There’s a solution to this you can start on right now: structure your life and experiences such that you become an awesome grandparent with hilarious stories, humility and appeal to your grandchildren.

I probably won’t ever meet my grandchildren if there are any, because I am over fifty and single; I probably will never be a parent. So I will have to go a lot sooner if I am not to be a burden on society. But if you think you are going to be a grandparent, you can work on being an irreplaceable and useful one.

I am referring to being so old that you are dependent on others everyday such that the caregivers cannot go on vacation. One set of my grandparents both lived to 100, and they had a 15 year age gap, so that was the first 30 years of my life that my parents sacrificed time with their kids, professional life, and personal life.

Very few people are independent after age 80, and a miniscule amount after 90.