 |
| A human skull (Wikimedia) |
I have always said that I want my body to go before my mind does. Having seen Alzheimer’s at home – or dementia as we used to call it – I was determined that I would not suffer from it. I even responded to an advert on Facebook from Bill Gates, whose own father suffered from dementia towards the end. I bought some tablets that he said would ward off senility. If Bill Gates promises it, I have no good reason to doubt their efficacy. He does need the money.
That does not mean they are guaranteed to work. I have always thought that the best hedge against dementia was to keep active and involved in what is around you. So, I have not (yet) given up work – although I do take on fewer jobs than before. I stay in touch with jobs on the internet but am usually too slow to respond and someone else gets what is offered. I have enough work and some guides, with bigger bills to pay, do not and need what is going more.
Anyway the jury on out on the efficacy of the anti-dementia pills. They are based on the diet that people live on in areas that have low rates of Alzheimer’s and I suppose it is impossible to tell if the pills are working or not. You are enjoying a reasonably coherent form of life. Maybe the pills really are warding off Alzheimer’s – or maybe your active lifestyle is protecting you and the pills are worthless. I will finish the pills I have and then come to a decision.
The anti-Alzheimer’s pills (as I shall call them from now) join a series I take every day – statins, pills for diabetes, even anti-constipation powders, which I take only when I feel they are needed. Every time I visit the doctor I seem to have another pill to take. I used to show people the pills that the average person took in their life at the British Museum, often reflecting that I did not need to take as many myself. Those days now are sadly gone.
One pill I would not mind taking is one that would make me see straight. I got knocked over by a car a couple of years ago and it has affected my eyesight ever since. I read more slowly than before and my eyes often get tired by seeing double. Even writing these monthly essays is becoming an effort as a result so, if one does not appear in a future month, you will know why. However, at present I intend to keep with my self-imposed timetable of one every month.
And, although I go to church sometimes, I find it impossible to believe in any form of afterlife. Apart from anything else, I would find it fairly dull. Being confined to a life without a body and only a soul does not strike me as very exciting or satisfying and I am forced to agree with those who think of it as a reward for leading a good life on this earth, which is probably shorthand for knowing your place and not rocking the boat too hard.
There is nothing like the promise of reward in the next world as a prize for behaving yourself in this one. In that, I am probably not that different from most others in this modern society where you are able to lead a well-rewarded life in this world without thinking of the next too much. Although, I am fairly sure of this, I sometimes wonder if my point of view is just a reflection of my background as a late twentieth/early twenty-first century sceptic.
We think that we know it all in our society but maybe we are just a product of that society as much as believers in salvation in the afterlife were products of a pious society in the past. What if we were just as blinkered as we think people in the past were? Food for thought in a sceptical age certainly. It might upset a few Dawkins-like atheists but I am not such a dedicated modern atheist that I would mourn this if it turned out to be true.
Edwin Lerner
My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com
