WHEN DO YOU WANT TO DIE?

Use the death calculator here.

The date that’s automatically entered is when I would like to die (November 17th, 2067). That will be my 85th birthday, and if I’m not dead already by then, I’ll make it happen.

I can’t recklessly kill myself at 85 though, there will be a small set of rules around it:

• I can’t cause extra work or inconvenience for living people (so no crashing a car at 120mph off a cliff, some team of people would have to spend money & time cleaning that up).
• Completely wrap up all family and business affairs.
• I can’t hurt anyone else in the process.
• Can’t do it in a way that bums people out.

The current coolest way I can think to do this (and adhere to all rules) is:

• Skydive into an active volcano.

I was born Zoroastrian (a really small religion), and a neat thing about the ways Zoroastrians in India handle dead bodies is they leave the body out for vultures to eat.

The theory behind this is your body goes back into the Earth.

I always thought this was kind of a neat solution.

By skydiving into an active volcano I would:
-Go back into the Earth.
-Wouldn’t hurt anyone.
-Would also get to SKYDIVE INTO AN ACTIVE VOLCANO which let’s be honest…..sounds awesome!

This idea has been with me for a really really long time. The way death is handled and discussed is currently pretty lame.

Think about it:
Every single person that has ever lived in the history of Earth…..has so far died. Therefore I think this “dying” concept is something that warrants some conversation, and maybe even a more humane way of doing it.

There’s many reasons I am a proponent of legalized euthanasia:

1.) You can’t control when you’re born, but you can control when you die. This can make a lot of people’s final years much more enjoyable and comfortable.

2.) By controlling the date of your death you can correctly forecast how much money you will need to live out your life. If you don’t know the date, you could live for 1 year or 30 years more. Those two different options require vastly different sums of money and planning.

3.) I equate the mental construct of “knowing my expiration date” to cramming for a test:
If you have a geography test in 6 months, you will probably not care too much at this moment and goof off. However if you have a geography test in three hours, you will probably buckle down and study like crazy!

For me personally, knowing the expiration date helps me do more things while I’m alive.

Some background about where this idea came from:
1.) I read a lot of books in middle school and high school that discussed this subject, and it made perfect sense that people should plan for their death. It almost sounds silly NOT to.

2.) On trips to India I’d see people being kept alive that in all honesty should just be put down. If someone’s life is full of misery and pain with no end in sight (in fact it’ll probably just get worse), why not put them down comfortably and in a humane way? We put down our beloved dogs like that because we want them to be comfortable, why not us?

3.) In high school I volunteered in an Alzheimers ward. It truly showed me how humans are mechanical machines that like all other machines tend to break down, require more and more maintenance, and at some point, need to be decommissioned.

Believe it or not I was heartless enough NOT to be affected by the patients with Alzheimers. I could handle that. What I DID feel was when the families of those patients would come to visit the Alzheimers ward, and the patient wouldn’t even recognize their own daughter or son or grandkids. Watching those people break down in tears from their loved ones not even recognizing them….I get slightly teary just thinking about it.

Common retorts to this argument:

“What if medicine advances and at 85 years old it’s like you’re 20?”
In that case I would modify the decision based on those new life circumstances. The equation I’d use is simple:

If life is sucky = Get ready for that volcano jump!
If life is great = Maybe keep on going.

“Don’t you want to live forever?”
Meh. Not really. I’d like to enjoy my time on stage, and then exit when the time feels right.

“How do you KNOW you won’t chicken out and not do it????”
This is an action I intend to take over 50+ years into the future, there’s no way to know for SURE this will still be my decision at the time. However at the moment, with the current state of technology, it is.

Sincerely,
Neville Medhora (1982 – 2067)

P.S. If you’d like to see how much time (in years/months/days/hours/minutes/seconds) you have to live, there’s a working Death Calculator at the top of this post!