My cat Sam, a lumpy thing under the best of circumstances, has a new lump where no lump should be, and will undergo surgery on Monday to remove it. Poor kins. Look at him, he has no clue. Just another one of life's chumps. A chump with a lump, that's my Sam. He barely even knows he has this weird lump, let alone that he'll be undergoing a veterinary procedure on a gleaming metal table. I hope Sam doesn't die. I mean not yet. A cat who never died would basically erase all limits in the area of geriatric feline surliness. I'd feel sorrow if Sam died, so I'd rather he didn't, unless he lived too long and became surly and no fun, and then who knows how I'd feel. Sam is an animal, he has some sort of survival instinct. He tries to ensure his own persistence in life but doesn't know why. It's not like he's thinking, Oh god I've got to make it, those tan Science Diet pellets I've eaten every day for seven years are just too good. Humans, on the other hand, are sometimes expected to have reasons to live, they are called upon to justify their existence, often by people who have taken a dislike to them for one reason or another. Usually this is put in terms of the human community or some other sketchy concept. What are you doing for others, how are you contributing and making things better, and so on. What have you given back to the society that turned you into a monster? This is more common in affluent societies. In poor or destitute nations it goes without saying that each life is sacred, the distinction between useful, productive people and worthless drags on society isn't emphasized so much. The potential starvation of all trumps those little details. Our attention is turned to famine victims and we feel terrible at the thought of lives in peril, but it could basically be the same face on every head, no questions asked. Victims don't need to justify their lives. As soon as you attain victim status mere survival is what's important. No one is going to ask if you threw out your jury duty summons before they give you a ladle of rice. We look at a sea of starving faces and they are equal in our eyes, all of them tragic, the total assholes who never helped carry water or who stole or who raped standing right alongside the emaciated children, and the good children next to the bad children, and the bad children next to the surly aged cats who moan and can't get comfortable. In countries like ours, a higher standard of living affords people the luxuries of time and calm mental clarity to coolly and ruthlessly distinguish between people who are completely wasting their lives and those who are not, the bad citizens from the good ones. I think if you put my life up against Sam's it would be pretty much a dead heat as far as who has lived the more worthwhile life. Of course Sam doesn't give a rat's ass whether anyone thinks his life has been well spent. I don't think death is gonna find him nursing a lot of regrets. If there's one thing I can't stand it's phony autumnal wisdom. People who were always utterly clueless throughout life somehow stumble into their 90s without setting themselves on fire and suddenly their usual irascible or merely simpleminded mutterings acquire the stately patina of a crusty emeritus professor's nuggets of perspicacity. It's sentimentality, this myth of the wisdom of the aged. We like creased elderly faces as long as they're in old black and white photographs from the historical archives of some faraway place, or they're a bleacherful of former Oscar winners. To be old is to have had that much longer to compile a master list of grievances against life, the life that clings to you and won't let go. Meanwhile Sam couldn't care less one way or the other, and he doesn't even know anyway, the bookends of his life are unimaginable to him. Surely there's a middle ground somewhere between these situations, what is it? What if you live fully every day according to your own criteria, until one day many years down the road you wake up and feel basically okay but just kinda over it, like a good party you suddenly want to leave, and sometime in the evening of that day you just disappear, painlessly and quickly, and your friends see you vanishing and wave goodbye, and as you evaporate you see their eyes shining and it feels pretty intensely emotional but not bad, and after you're gone everyone gets drunk that night and divides up your stuff.