Leo McKern (aka Rumpole of the Bailey) said he could not imagine any vice worth giving up just so he could live for a few more years in a nursing home. Was he right? What risks should we avoid to make old age less difficult?

I look back at many people with Vices and wonder . . . Even though I find it distasteful, perhaps, this is what brings them happiness. Isn't the pursuit of Happiness what we should strive for in life . . . Isn't this the difference between living and existing?

I look at Christopher Hitchens . . . He loved to drink and smoke and you can find numerous videos where, like a "Lounge Singer", He has a scotch in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other . . . When he was diagnosed with cancer, I don't think he had that many regrets with regards to these vices. Here was a man who clearly knew that this w=life was all there is and chose to live it in with vices that shortened it but made him happy.

My Father-in-law is bound to a wheel chair. What truly made him happy in life was to be out in nature and to hunt. Now he is "existing" in a wheel chair. He gets up, the nurses put him in his chair, he watches TV and reads . . . Eats 3 square meals and repeats each day. The pharmaceuticals he takes keeps him alive, but he is not living. 

After seeing the damage smoking does, it is not a matter of a few years in a nursing home. It is a huge difference in the quality of life for what can be decades.

Smoking has cost my mother-in-law her vision and her ability to breathe freely. She is mostly housebound because she is attached to an oxygen machine, and she can no longer see to drive.

My sister-in-law's brother is skin and bone. He has lost all his teeth. His heart is shot after several heart attacks. He is living on borrowed time. 

There was a woman in my father-in-law's nursing home who lost fingers on both hands because of Buerger's Disease. It shuts down the circulation to the fingers and toes, and them become gangrene and have to be removed. She was in her early 60s and was mentally sharp, but she was stuck in a nursing home because she was unable to take care of herself because she had little use of her hands. It is hard to hold a fork and feed yourself with only two fingers.

It is a vice well worth giving up. As I said it is not a few years, it can be decades of poor quality  of life.

Anyone who thinks in those terms isn't thinking about what is TRULY important.  

Being around for the people you are important to (like family) is far more important .  I, for one, want to be around for my grandkids .. I want to be part of everything from the first day of school to the last day of high school .. From their first love to their wedding day, the birth of their first child, and beyond.  I want to continue to  be my kids friend and confidant. I want to continue doing my job as a wife, a parent and a grandparent...for THEM as much as for ME.

i dont need to destroy myself in order to enjoy myself if being happy means you need to dull your sences or cloud your judgement then your not happy to begin with