This is part of What Interest Me This Week.

I've been listening to interviews and talks by one Stephen Jenkinson the past few weeks. He guides people through the process of death, from what I can gather.

His stance and values towards death are aligned with mine. Among them are pet peeves about youth obsessions and cultural handicap towards the phenomenon (mistaken as an act) of death.

One theme from him stood out to me: addiction to competence. This is less about death but the stage before that, being old.

The irony is variation in the process of growing up (as a kid) is much smaller than the process of growing old. The experience of being old is unique for every person. That's simply a logical deduction where each old person came with a rich combo of history that will bound to produce a unique experience. A kid has none of that baggage.

Therefore there can be playbooks for kids on how to grow up, condensible to the form of standard moral-education. But there exist no playbook that I know of on how to be old. The closest one I can cite is I-Ching, which is a whole other clusterfuck in and of itself.

Buddhists and Daoists have an orientation towards void/emptiness. That may be a clue of some kind, but it's hardly concrete enough to be applicable for anyone. Besides those were designed for a maximum lifespan of 70.

People typically look to classic religion but I'm not convinced they are equipped to handle unprecedented lifespan. Furthermore this line of inquiry is about how to live, not how to die.

I suppose a playbook for how to be a great 80 year-old would be substantially different from a great 120 year-old.

Something like competence for one, is something to be let go of. But what else should you let go of when you are old enough?