Why Your Final Moments Shouldn’t Worry You
I’m sure you recognize the sentiment: “When I’m on my deathbed, looking back on my life…” A magnificently lofty idea, but rather nonsensical in practice. For a start, almost no one is that lucid when they’re on their deathbed. The three main doors into the afterlife are heart attack, stroke and cancer. In the first two cases, you won’t have time for philosophical reflection. In most cases of cancer, you’ll be so stuffed to the gunnels with painkillers that you won’t be able to think straight. Nor do those afflicted with dementia or Alzheimer’s achieve any new insights on their deathbeds. And even if you do have the time and wherewithal in your final moments to reminisce, your memories won’t (as we saw in the previous three chapters) correspond fully to reality. Your remembering self produces systematic errors. It tells tall tales.
Basically, it’s not worth coming up with hypotheses about the moment of your death or your final hours. Trust me, it won’t be like you picture it today. More crucial still is that the way you feel in your final moments is totally irrelevant in the context of your whole life. Contemplating your hour of death is unproductive, and will only distract you from the good life.
Daniel Kahneman has systematically uncovered various flaws in our memories. One of these is duration neglect: the duration of an episode is not reflected in your memory of it. Your brain retrospectively judges a three-week holiday no more or less positively or negatively than a one-week holiday. In terms of your overall assessment, only the peak and end of the holiday matter (the peak–end rule familiar from Chapter 20). You will remember a film that’s exciting throughout but which ends unsatisfactorily as a bad film. Ditto for parties, concerts, books, lectures, homes and relationships.
Does the same go for judging a whole life? Let’s find out. We’ll evaluate Anna’s life: “Anna was never married and had no children. She was extremely happy, enjoyed her work, loved her holidays, her free time and her many friends. At the age of thirty she died suddenly and painlessly in a car accident.” Rate the attractiveness of Anna’s life on a scale from 1 (terrible) to 9 (fantastic), with 5 as the midpoint (so-so).
Now evaluate Berta’s life: “Berta was never married and had no children. She was extremely happy, enjoyed her work, loved her holidays, her free time and her many friends. The last five years of her life weren’t as great as the previous ones, but still enjoyable. At the age of thirty-five she died suddenly and painlessly in a car accident.” Rate this life on a scale from 1 to 9 too.
Researchers in the USA confronted students with similar life stories. The result? Lives like Anna’s were rated significantly better than Berta’s. That’s illogical, because both women led extremely happy lives for their first thirty years. Berta had an extra five years of life, admittedly not as good but on the whole pleasant. Viewed rationally, we have to rate Berta’s life more highly. Yet Anna’s life ended on a high, and Berta’s on a relative low. The peak–end rule comes into play here, but it still seems remarkable that the extra five pleasant years weren’t counted. The researchers termed this the James Dean effect. Dean died in a road accident at the peak of his glittering career—at the tender age of twenty-four. If he’d lived further years or decades as a moderately successful and moderately happy actor, many people would doubtless rate his life as less attractive.
Now I’d like you to rate Anna’s and Berta’s lives once more, this time supposing that the accidents took place when Anna was sixty and Berta sixty-five. Everything else remains unchanged. How would you rate them now? Take a moment before you read on.
The test subjects were asked the same in the study. The result? Anna’s life was rated significantly better than Berta’s again (as you’d expect from the peak–end rule). What’s astonishing is that the thirty extremely happy additional years Anna experienced had hardly any bearing on the ratings. It made no difference whether Anna died at thirty or sixty. Ditto for Berta. Now, that really is illogical—and a classic example of duration neglect.
All in all, we have terrible trouble evaluating the attractiveness of other people’s lives. We commit systematic errors in reasoning. That’s forgivable in the case of fictional people like Anna and Berta, but not when it comes to your own actual life. Bear in mind that you almost certainly won’t die in your prime, like James Dean—but after a protracted and gradual decline in your physical and mental capacities. Depending on the extent of your afflictions, your level of moment-by-moment happiness will on average be lower than in earlier, complaint-free decades. So what conclusions should you draw? Don’t let those afflictions cloud your judgment of your whole life. Better a life well lived and a few painful days on your deathbed than a shoddy life and a good death. Age and death are the price we pay for a good life—like a hefty bill after a meal. I’m not willing to pay that price for a fast-food burger. Give me a six-course dinner in a Michelin-starred restaurant with first-class wine and good company every time.